H
ow have I not played this
until now? Crypt of the
Necrodancer is constructed
from my two teenage passions of 1)
anything with swords in it and 2)
drumming. Unfortunately, it’s also a
jabbing reminder that I was never
very good at the latter.
This means that I’m bad at Crypt of
the Necrodancer. As you might have
gleaned from the fact I picked
Dwarfs in TW: Warhammer II, I like
caution. Planning is my kink. So a
game like this, that makes me move
constantly while acting thoughtfully,
is often beyond my meager skills. I
manage well enough with the early
levels to feel moderately good about
myself, but it’s undermined by the
creeping realization that I’ll be shit at
Necrodancer when it gets tough. At
one point, I fall through a trapdoor
into a pit with a dragon, a mage, and
a lute-headed minotaur, and my
response is the equivalent of video
game arrhythmia. Luckily,
Necrodancer is so good I absolutely
don’t care. It’s hard to think of a game
that makes me feel this happy even
when I’m being squashed.
Every new enemy is a challenge
that requires detailed observation to
beat. At first, I think I can just ‘feel’
my way through, but it doesn’t work.
I have to watch, learn, and overcome.
Just as I begin to get the hang of
things, the game starts throwing
changing tempos and new beats at
me. It comes at exactly the right
moment—the world still feels
challenging, but I’ve got fond
memories of the two minutes I
spent feeling good about myself.
When things go wrong, I’ve got
nobody to blame but myself, which
is a healthy thing to
experience. It’s part Disco
Gauntlet, part therapy
session, and I adore it.Beaten by beats in CRYPT OF THE NECRODANCER
EXPECT TO PAY
$3DEVELOPER
Brace Yourself GamesPUBLISHER
Brace Yourself GamesNEED TO KNOWPressing up and down and
KEEPING TIME hoping for the best did not work.88
I
was sort-of obsessed with the
original Chaos: Battle of the
Wizards when I was a kid—and by
‘sort of ’, I mean that the tape is
literally still in the deck in the ZX
Spectrum, buried in my parents’ loft.
So going back to this updated version
feels nostalgic like a school reunion
with manticores and blobs. It’s a
crisp, neat, strangely satisfying
update. I love the interface and
monster designs. And even though
it’s a more cerebral experience than
the original, the range of spells feels
more familiar than something should
after 30 years. There’s a compelling
campaign mode, which saves me the
trouble of searching out old
school friends for a long-
overdue grudge match.
CHAOS REBORN
81
C
haos is a bedroom classic now
played online. Crawl is the lo-fi
opposite. It’s a multiplayer game
about ganging up on your friends.
One player controls the hero, the
others the monsters. Whoever
succeeds takes their place, like a
savage, dungeon-delving version of
tag. I especially love that despite each
game lasting only 30 minutes, there’s
a genuine sense of progression. Every
player levels up in a different way,
and it always feels balanced. It’s also
a great test of your timing—but not in
a Necrodancer way. At the risk of
sounding like a motivational poster,
picking exactly the right moment
to kill your friends is the
difference between success
and failure.CRAWL
75
I
t’s easy to be mean about
Kingdoms of Amalur’s low fantasy
world of gnomes and underplaces
and races that sound like they’re
copy-pasted from the self-published
fantasy novel your cousin wrote. But
there’s something honest about The
Reckoning—the RPG equivalent of a
well-made cupboard. Plus the
sprightly world and distracting quests
make it feel like playing an
MMO without all the other
people getting in the way.KINGDOMS OF AMALUR:
THE RECKONING
69
I’m going to die, but look!
I summoned a dragon!Can ghosts bleed?
Let’s find out.Take away the chonky knight and
this is a Windows 10 lock screen.REVIEW