Crypt of the Necrodancer

2025-07-13
In 2015 when I first played Crypt of the Necrodancer I thought a rhythm roguelike game was the greatest idea on earth. And then I eked my way through Zone 2 with Cadence and promptly said "Fuck this" and dumped it. Despite it's delicious pixel art and perfectly paired music that provides the lifeblood for your spelunking, you are at the end of the day playing a difficult roguelike where any number of small mistakes will kill a run. And the whole time you must keep moving. "Slow and steady wins the race", you say. "Fuck you, move", says Crypt of the Necrodancer.

In Necrodancer you must always be fast enough to know which moves are the right moves and which are the wrong moves. It is not a question of intelligence, it is a question of training, of practice. And Crypt of the Necrodancer might have the best suite of tools to train I've ever seen in a game. Having trouble with a boss? There's a room to just play them over and over till you know them like the back of your hand. Don't know how to deal with a specific enemy type? There's a room for that. There's even a room for trying out different weapons so that how each weapon behaves is burned into the synapses of your brain. Exactly where you need information stored for when it's needed as a part of one of innumerable split second decisions you have to make in Crypt of the Necrodancer.

I played Zone 4 over and over and over with Cadence and though I could tell I was getting better and better through each loss and would eventually win, I knew I could win now if I just slowed it all down. I switched to Bard--the character where you can remove the time-based nature of the game, effectively defanging it--and I won Zone 4 first try. It was comical. Ultimately Crypt of the Necrodancer is firm but fair and it is fun. But I'm at a point in my life where investing time to master a single game and achieve greater and greater heights just ain't my bag anymore. I guess 10 years later, I'm marching to the beat of a different drum.