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[i]You Died but a Necromancer revived you[/i] is such a mouthful of a name for a game. At its core, it's a survival/score-chasing arcade game with an absolute and strict timer on each level. There are many ways to died and every time you do, the so called Necromancer brings you back to this hellish tower/dungeon. It takes the frequent and casual deaths of the arcade genre and makes it into a joke. Simple as that.
Run, stop, run some more, avoid the traps and get to the exit of each floor. That's the primary goal for each level, except for the final and only boss at the end, the Necromancer, and you just need to deal with him to complete the game. While this sounds easy, the game is definitely not. There's a fairly dramatic learning curve from the first time you will pick up this game to the point where you are comfortable around most levels in order to tackle the hardest versions of the game available. All of the levels have a base layout that repeats, with a few exceptions, but all of the traps (types and numbers) on each floor is randomized and their locations are as well. So your playing experience will be different from run to run.
You might find that the hitbox for your main character sprite doesn't seem to hit as you would expect in a lot of different places at first. Don't worry, there's no inconsistency in the hitboxes. If you turn on the hitbox display, you will see that there's a small rectangular hitbox that stays consistent and if it strikes anything deemed dangerous, you die. The biggest noticeable difference without the hitbox displayed is the ability to walk with about 1/3 of your horizontal sprite on spikes moving up and down, but no give when walking left and right. Just turn on the hitbox display and you will see what I mean.
The game has 4 basic difficulty modes, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Ultra. Easy is where I would urge anyone new to start, just to familiarize yourself with the game. It's the same as Normal, except if you die, you just respawn on that level. This is true for the most part except for the few stages just before the necromancer. These details are not important. I would suggest that anyone start on Easy and go to Normal after you beat Easy. Normal separates the game into different sections and you will respawn at the beginning of that section after every death. Hard contains more traps than Normal, so the levels are naturally more difficult. Ultra is the brutal version of the game. You might and might not eventually get good enough to beat the game on Ultra, because it does not allow any deaths from beginning to end.
Actually, to spice things up, the developer has given the players free reign on just how difficult they want the game to be. You can customize the number of traps from several fewer up to a lot more. I tried doing this and with the most traps you can have, I found the game to be practically impossible, trying to keep track of everything started to make my mind numb. I just love how versatile the game is made to be. If you don't like the death splash-screen, you can also remove it just so that you get an instant retry.
If you have friends who like to huddle around a single screen, this game is great in its party modes as well. There is Coop and Versus. Coop means that only one of you need to reach the exit, whereas Versus looks to see who can get to the exit the fastest.
In addition to all of that, there is an Endless mode, and so of course there are achievements tied to it, for getting to a specific point total.
To add more to the arcade/party atmosphere, you have a lot of backgrounds to choose from, mainly because the game is played on a square display, and so your extra real estate on the screen is used to display a background of your choosing. There are many playable sprites to unlock as you play as well, and these will be in-game bonuses for those who love to unlock cosmetics, etc.
My one and only gripe with this game in its current state is the lack of global leaderboards for the Endless mode. This game should at least introduce that one leaderboard. For those of you who want to only see yourself getting personal bests, this is okay. There should also be speedrun leaderboards for the 4 preset difficulties, in my opinion. After all, this is designed and marketed as an arcade game, and so the leaderboards will definitely attract more of those arcade-game players who love chasing scoreboards.
If you are chasing after the 100% of achievements, I wish you the best of luck. I have only made it to the third biome/section on Ultra difficulty, and you need to beat the whole game in that mode to secure all achievements. Those tied to this difficulty are definitely the most troublesome to get.
Anyway, I made a first-look video of this game, and I had quite a lot fun. I played on Easy of course and tried to look at some other options in the video:
https://youtu.be/J6M7zYIfDxg
[h1]Controls[/h1]
Using a controller, I noticed that I could use the joystick, d-pad, or even the four buttons on the right to move my sprite. It works fine with keyboard as well. I played mainly with d-pad. Controls are responsive, you move when the button is pressed, and you stop when it's let go.
[h1]Graphics[/h1]
Pixel art, pretty simple but well done.
[h1]Music[/h1]
Music is pretty high intensity with that retro arcade feel.
[h1]Audience[/h1]
Arcade-style gamers and score chasers.
[h1]Pricing[/h1]
At $8.99 base price, the game may initially look to be a little expensive, for such a simple game. If you are looking to get fun out of the game though, it's definitely there. I find it great as a coffee-break game, since you can launch and play any mode for 5-10 minutes and feel like you got a pretty good gameplay experience out of it. If this is your kind of game, you will have fun with it, whether you pay full price or wait for a sale.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Look at my video, look at some screenshots, look at whatever you want, what you see in those is what you will get in [i]You Died but a Necromancer revived you.[/i] It's a fun arcade style game that I will probably keep coming back to for 5-10 minute play sessions for quite some time. For what it is and what it tries to do, it does it very effectively. Overall, very fun, very addictive, and very much an one-more try game. Sure, it doesn't target the collective gaming audience, but it's really great for those who enjoy these types of games. Definitely recommended!
[quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]
