Unfinished: Crypt of the NecroDancer 07/31/2014

Oh my god, so excited to see this.

Weird. Usually the scheduled time on the front page corresponds to 9am my local time, but this was released 9am PST instead.

This has the potential to be my game of the year.

@outrager: Said it was going up at 2 PM GMT here in the UK (it's 5 PM now). Guess it just ran into some trouble getting posted.

I've been playing this today, it's great.

"Necrodancer- When you have sex with dead dancers."

Makes sense to me.

This is really interesting. Can you imagine not only running for your life through a dungeon, but DANCING for your life??

This is Kinda awesome

Not super sold on the game but the soundtrack is great.

The game is nowhere near completion and it's already rock solid! I'm so glad I pre-ordered. Fantastic game. The developers should be proud.

Calling this as first game with multiple Unfinished videos (unless that has already happened?).

Lots of tile based games lately.

Spelunky-lite....so it's a rogue-like? I have no idea where Alex is getting the Spelunky comparison from past the daily challenge.

This is absolutely delightful.

This game seems super rad. Involving rhythm in as a core mechanic to mix up this style of one-life random RPG is a fantastic concept. I love the idea of using the dance pad, and any game involving Danny Baranowsky's musical stylings is a must in my book.

@jimipeppr I believe Destiny has already had two.

For some reason, I just want to play Rogue Legacy after watching this. CotNM makes roguelikes feel fun again.

Now, if only Danny Baranowsky could do some of this type of music in RL...

Does this have the original Necrodancer?

Sad to see the relative lack of understanding for the mechanics in the game so far - but it's understandable; the game really doesn't explain much of anything in any build so far. Hopefully they'll consider putting in something like a glossary of items you've acquired so far with hints about what they do.

Excited to see the love it's getting, though - I'm really enjoying playing with custom songs with higher BPMs for totally manic action!

This is a weird combination - such an inherently time sensitive game style with a game style that generally involves periods of concentration and decision making between individual moves. But it seems like it works, in its way.

Also the shopkeepers lyrics are maaaaad dope, y'all

@ateatree: Yeah, that would be a helpful addition. I've figured out some of the item abilities just from messing around with them, but it would be nice to know ahead of time what some of those scrolls do, for instance.

5:50 Alex missed a chest and i died a little inside.

That's a Binding of Isaac staple though, which is popular to these style of games. Here's an item. What does it do? I don't know. Use it. Try and remember the next time you get it. A lot of these issues get ironed out with webpages listing the items and what their purpose is. But I wouldn't count on anything in game to help you out.

@y2ken: ah. I predict that it will be the first game with multiple Unfinished videos* then.

*of a game that is actually unfinished

That's true, and a community will certainly help solve the issue. Heck, I don't mind putting down what I've seen and done so far. In Necrodancer, the difficulty comes as much from knowing how to use your items strategically while navigating to the rhythm as it does from knowing what the items do, though. Guess it depends on how approachable they want things to be. I kind of like the idea of getting gradually more information in a glossary the more times you acquire/use any given item. Something like.

Apple:

1 use - Recovers health

3 uses - Recovers a little health

10 uses - Recovers one heart of health

But these are minor gripes on a mechanically strong (and fun!) game.

The swapping floor tiles when you get your groove on are driving me nuts. I kind of can't stand looking at it.

Loved the intro to this quick look.

I kind of immediately rolled my eyes when I learnt this was a roguelike, but it definitely looks like a really neat take on these sort of games.

Shopkeeper is amazing.

@meatball: You can turn that off, if it's not your thing.

@ateatree: That was always something I wanted for these types of games. Is that you get a better item description the more you use it or something. That way you're still earning something and it's not like the game is just telling you what's going on. But yeah.

Ahhh my brain cant handel this =(

Bard mode just seems like traditional rogue, it makes the game turn-based, which is pretty cool.

Giant Bomb East - we Quick Look indie games because Velvet Sundown is about as taxing a game as we can run on our current hardware.

To be fair, Velvet Sundown is terribly optimized on all platforms.

eeh looks really jarring

I'll get this when it's done but man, the music is fantastic.

Looks like a great zone-out game.

This is super cool, I've been waiting for it ever since I saw it on GDC.
love the wackiness.

I love Alex and Vinny content. :D Can't wait for even better stuff in the future when you get set up better.

I'm very dissapointed they didn't play this with a dance pad... very dissapointed. I thought I knew you giant bomb.

@castiel: I'm looking into acquiring a dance pad for future coverage. Stay tuned.

The one time a game actually IS a roguelike, of course he has to go and use a different term on top of roguelike.

If you had asked me how to mix real-time and turn-based, I never would've answered "rhythm game". I love how they combined two contradictory gamestyles by stealing ideas from another style.

The only downside is it wears out your fingers fast. I was getting cramps after an hour of tapping the keyboard.

Hell yeah! show us your moves o_o

I might get this game, but only if i can play as the shop keeper from the start. And then get a cloning spell to fill the entire screen with.... art pure art.

I'm digging the music alot!. I think I'll get this game.

@alex For cloud save stuff, I'd recommend using a program called Game Save Manager. It simply backs up your files to a folder but you can have that folder sync with something like DropBox and boom, cloud saves. It's probably more reliable than Valve's.

A thing that wasn't mentioned is that, if you're not digging the game's music, you can use your own music and the game will adapt to it. Really cool addition.

Bought it immediately after watching this unfinished and it's pretty fucking rad.

The singing Shop Keeper reminds me of the music from the DS game Dark Spire.

That shopkeeper is incredible.

Ive been using the face buttons of the controller instead of the dpad. It is much easier to play that way, you can actually do the button combos easy, and its way lighter on the thumbs.

I never got into Spelunky, but.. maybe this?