LogFAQs > #933001031

#20





Years of release: 2019 (Switch)
Beaten?: Yes

I would like to share with you a conversation I had on a private server of Necrodancer friends. The context of this is that we were putting together a numbered list of various game ideas that we wanted someone to make someday. Please note the time stamps.



Ultimately, this game ended up being procedurally generated, and I didn't even suggest the idea of turning Necrodancer into an ACTUAL Zelda game. But... well, let's just say this game coming out fulfilled one of my wildest fantasies, regardless.

The mere existence of this game is one of the strangest and most wonderful miracles I can even imagine. I had no reason to even bother watching the Nintendo indie showcase where this game was announced; imagine my absolute confusion and shock when I woke up that day to a bunch of Discord notifications revealing that... this was a thing that existed. It still doesn't feel real - Crypt of the Necrodancer getting a crossover with The Legend of Zelda. It feels like a weird dream that I'm still having. Naturally, those of us in this channel freaked the actual fuck out in March of 2019 when this game was eventually announced. The proceeding months waiting for this game were agonizing. I knew it probably wouldn't live up to how good Necrodancer was, but I couldn't wait to play it.

It didn't disappoint; although it indeed was not as good as Necrodancer, it was an excellent title in its own right, and lives up to its concept about as well as I could have hoped. In fact, it was probably in the upper ranges of how optimistic I was about the game; I loved how this game incorporated Zelda's overworld and dungeon mechanics, its various tools and items, how it created challenging boss fights, and how much fanservice it gave for fans of both series.

We did a lot of speculating about what the mechanics of the game would be like, and whether or not it would adhere more to Necrodancer or Zelda traditions. It ended up being roughly what I expected - the gameplay is mostly Necrodancer but with Zelda items, and the characters and world are largely Zelda-derived, but Cadence shows up (although she plays a much smaller role than I expected - interestingly enough, this is a game where Zelda shines instead). I think it all works pretty well. Thanks to the less roguelike nature of the game, I think this game is a bit more accessible to new players, and it's easier to beat than Necrodancer but still gives a lot of ways to challenge yourself, through speedrunning and playing on more difficult modes. I like how this game found ways to give the idea of a Zelda-like adventure without having required items and paths for you to take, the nonlinearity reminds me just a little bit more of Zelda 1, where items are useful but not needed. The dungeons and boss fights feel great. Holy crap, the music. The music is wonderful.

This game only doesn't reach the highs of Necrodancer because I think it's comparitively lacking in replay value. There aren't a lot of different items you can get in this one, so every run more or less plays out the same way, whereas every Necrodancer run can be quite different depending on which items you find. It doesn't have quite the same longetivity, although it's still an excellent game to race. I sadly haven't been able to play this one as much as I did Necrodancer, because I don't have the means to stream the game, so I haven't been able to compete online except in the first week in which we competed to set the best possible times on the leaderboard (I got #3 in the double-time category with a time of 22 minutes). This has also contributed to my relative lack of playtime with this game.

I hope we get more stuff like this. Ryan Clark, the Necrodancer developer, was given the keys to the Zelda car and he handled it about as well as he possibly could have, and the game was well-received and successful. I've been saying for a long time that Nintendo would do well to release its grip on its own franchises a bit and outsource them to indie devs who love the games and would do a great job with them, and this game proves that I'm right, I think. Funny story - someone I know who knows Ryan Clark a little better knew that he was working on some kind of Necrodancer crossover with another game, AND he had heard rumors that Nintendo was working on a Zelda crossover, but he never put two and two together to realize that these rumors referred to the same game. I don't think I would have put it together either. It's just too crazy to imagine Necrodancer x Zelda being real.

By the way, yes, Necrodancer ranks somewhere in the top 10 of my list. I think everyone who knows me even slightly already knows this.