Necrosphere Review
By: David (@friendshipguy_)
- Necrosphere
- Developer - Cat Nigiri
- Publisher - Cat Nigiri
- PC/Mac
Metroidvania games are something near and dear to my heart; I grew up watching my brother play htem, and eventually started consuming them myself. It’s a genre of game that I’m happ to see still being itereated upon, and Necrosphere definitely does an excellent job itereating upon those past experiences, save for a few caveats. However, it should be noted that Necrosphere is an incredibly small title – able to be beaten in far less time than I spent on it. At times, this can make it feel like a proof-of-concept for its intriguing choice of controller input – see, it only uses the left and right arrow keys. It is billed as a bite-sized metroidvania title after all.
The story is minimal, and not much narrative is needed for the minimal backtracking you’ll be doing through the game. Terry is sucked into the Necrosphere, which is hell for lack of a better comparison, and is tasked by his fellow agents to escape from the only remaining portal left open. That’s it, you don’t need much more to go on besides that. There are notes and collectibles that don’t really add flavor text, but add a little bit of personality to the other characters in the game save for Terry, who you control. For what it’s worth, it offers some tight platforming. There’s not a single moment playing it where I felt like I was disposed of at the whim of the game. Most, if not all of my deaths were my fault because of a mispressed key at the wrong time.
Much of the time you’ll be retreading the last area you went over two to three times in standard fashion for a metroidvania title, though I had gripes with the lack of a map provided. You’re tasked with remembering the flow of the world yourself because of this, and the fact that the art style the game depicts itself in is minimalistic sprites, you’ll pretty quickly get lost or confused. There’s not a lot of cohesiveness to it either. Where adventure games of similar ilk have cascading worlds à la Metroid 2 where you descent as you defeat more metroids, or any Castlevania title where you’re usually fighting your way up despite not noticing much of the ascent yourself. There’s distinct areas, of course, but you’ll be going back and forth prodding so many switches for the sake of puzzle solving that it’s not hard getting lost staring at the same color palette for some time.
Unlike most metroidvania titles, there’s little in the way of combat. There’s one enemy type that you’ll encounter only a handful of times, and up until acquiring a certain item, all you’ll do is run away. Traversing the world consists of completing puzzles, or platform puzzles that are significantly less infuriating than Super Meatboy, the game only feels like a true test of skill at near the last bits of the game, and one would argue that that makes sense, but perhaps I’m too used to the platforming of the recent Super Mario titles where you’re introduced to a new element of game design, and then it’s reused in a multitude of ways to challenge the player. Even the obstacles are recycled – it isn’t really a spoiler, but you’ll mostly be jumping over fireballs, spikes, and metal platforms that slide back and forth in either vertical or horizontal directions. This wouldn’t be as upsetting if enemies hadn’t been introduced at the first. Take VVVVVV for example. It’s a game that uses similar mechanics and tactics, but it’s all reflex-based, vertical movement with not a hint of an enemy in sight.
With, Necrosphere is a pretty exceptional game for how much it costs, and
the team that developed it. Cat Nigiri managed to make an exceedingly cheap
title that’s exceptionally fun. I managed to squeeze out a few hours-worth of
time in between classes at university, and didn’t find anything disappointingly
glaring that hampered my experiencing playing this. The best thing to come out
of Necrosphere is that it’s
challenging for all levels of play, meaning that if you’re not as seasoned at
games like this you’ll probably get a good six or so hours of play. That seems
to be the average for people, though there are speed-runs where the game is
completed in under an hour, and achievements for even less than that.
Considering that a full price, blockbuster title rewards about twenty hours of
time at minimum, the fact that people are squeezing around six out of a title
that costs about half the price of a matinee movie ticket here in California,
I’d say it’s more than worth the pick-up.
A small side note: The game doesn’t play well with captures or screenshots - pressing the default key, in this case F12, caused a debug menu to pop up on PC. This explains the lack of visuals for this particular review.