Get Your Dancing Shoes On, Crypt Of The Necrodancer Comes To Linux Soon

To the beat of the music, with your own mp3s?
Probably not the perfect game for some Sunn O)))? :P

I was thinking of trying it with some heavy metal...see how that works out :P

I was thinking of trying it with some heavy metal...see how that works out :P

Now that's an idea I can get behind! Some Trivium, Metallica or A7X for my tastes :D

Yeah, often rythm games are extremely difficult… For example the recent « Fredric » games on Steam, the first level of the demo is way too hard. And no way to train at a lowered pace.

Crypt of the NecroDancer has a pretty good learning curve to it, IMO. The first zone isn't too hard, and is enjoyable in its own right, the second zone becomes a skill wall that prepares you for the rest of the game.

There was also a new playable character added with the last update who doesn't have to move in time with the music (instead, all enemies move in time with his movement, creating a more "turn based" environment that might be a little easier to get the hang of).

Unlockable training stuff was added recently as well, which lets players choose a particular enemy to face off against to learn/practice against their patterns.

The developer has talked about how he sees NecroDancer as being inspired by Spelunky in terms of being an "accessible" roguelike-like. It's easy to jump in and feel like you're playing, but there are also skill walls like the second zone which Liam mentioned (that'd be the equivalent of the Jungle in Spelunky) that are there to make sure you're prepared for the challenges ahead before you can proceed.

I went into a bit more detail in my first impressions article back in May.

To the beat of the music, with your own mp3s?
Probably not the perfect game for some Sunn O)))? :P

I haven't tried any metal, but it works OK with some original acoustic recordings. I haven't tried to get custom music running in a while, but last time I did, the beat file generator wasn't included with the game and getting my own tracks in was a bit fiddly. The developers have said that the final game should include the ability to do all that in-game on all platforms.

With the game's fantastic soundtrack, I've found it hard to justify keeping custom music in though :D

the second zone becomes a skill wall that prepares you for the rest of the game.

To me that sounds like “the second zone is suddenly way more difficult with no progression and no hints to help the player, and if it’s too hard for you then we don’t care about you”… Hopefully I’m wrong.

Hmm. I see it as an important gating mechanism that makes sure that players don't feel the way that you describe when they reach later parts of the game. It's the point at which difficulty starts ramping up, but you still feel like you're learning all the time (or at least I did). It introduces a couple of new enemy types which encourage you to hone particular play styles.

With enemy movement styles being very readable, the game gives you plenty of opportunity to learn the new stuff that's introduced. It's the emergent complexity from variations in procedural level generation and enemy placement combined with different equipment that become the challenge rather than the new enemy types.

In "normal" mode, the game only lets you play through one zone at a time. If you play zone 2 in normal mode, you'll always be playing with default equipment, meaning that you'll never end up feeling more disadvantaged than your first exposure (which makes practicing feel easier/fairer than it does in something like Spelunky when using the shortcut tunnels).

The problem is if you start sugar coating a game like this, then the difficulty ramping up takes too long and the game gets unnecessarily drawn out.

For Necrodancer it's quite hard to begin with anyway, so it feels about right. That said I haven't played the second zone enough yet to really feel its pain.

I wasn't sold on this game till I saw the PreRec/RedLetterMedia review:

View video on youtube.com