I’ll be the first to admit that I am particularly unfond of the original Rogue. I’m fucking terrible at it, I never know what I’m doing, and I die within like five minutes of getting into the dungeon. At one point I drank a potion and wound up poisoning myself. Other games that have taken Rogue’s mechanics, by contrast, have almost always managed to capture my interest (I had, until recently, been particularly fond of Legend of Dungeon, and my brother and I have played a fair amount of Abyss Odyssey, although we have as of yet failed miserably at unlocking any of the other characters).

I remember the Crypt of the Necrodancer unfinished QL going up ages ago, but I have a fairly strict policy when it comes to buying unfinished games (i.e. I tend not to do it, and I certainly don’t do it for full price), so while I was intrigued, I filed it away as something to check out later and left it at that. Then of course Halloween happened, and with it the Steam sale, and with that the idea of dropping a tenner on a game which, while not finished, at least seemed solid enough that I could probably get a tenner’s worth of enjoyment out of it (which is a pretty low bar to clear, honestly).

Crypt of the Necrodancer is basically all I’ve been playing for the last two weeks.

I’m not sure what exactly it is that has caused me to become so addicted to this game, but the simplicity of the game (hit your buttons to the beat) and the fact combat is essentially based upon the idea of timing your movements against the movements of your enemies, there’s some kind of wonderful alchemy that transpires and the hooks of the game are dug deep.

Add to that the upgrade system, which rewards exploration and digging basically everywhere, and suddenly it’s not as much of a shock that I can’t seem to stop playing the game. It’s still unfinished—most of the alternate characters remain unlocked, and supposedly there’s different music and art to come, but it feels finished at this point—or at least it does to me. Any new content that gets added is all gravy—especially considering I’ve only just gotten to the second dungeon.

Can we talk about that second dungeon, by the way? I would have been happy with more of the same, but instead there’s a whole different environment and enemies that have been quite happy to beat the ever-living shit out of me whenever I’ve attempted to get down there.

If this game were to show up on Vita, I would have to buy a Vita, because I had to spend a lot of time out of the house this past week and having the ability to play this game out of the house would be too good to pass up.

AN: A short one this week, because there were just too many fucking Cooks for me to get to something more substantial—and while Crypt of the Necrodancer is fucking fantastic, there’s not much else to say about it (although it does show a trend I’ve noticed recently where a smaller indie game decides to go with a female protagonist, because why the fuck not. I like this trend!

TOO MANY COOKS