A First Look at 'The Unliving'
Hey Tappers- If anyone of you have been curious about Rocketbrush Studios roguelite, 'The Unliving' - you're in the right place.
While it just released in early access, what's there is an interesting, yet ultimately mixed bag of an experience.
To whit, you take the role of 'The Necromancer' - a dark sorceror whose exact motivations are lost due to some laser-guided amnesia after a ritual gone wrong. Terribly wrong give it tore his soul into four neat pieces. Thankfully, his skills are still intact, given the entire world wants him dead- resulting in him rampaging through a trio of chapters in search of, well, himself.
It's a serviceable enough story- and I didn't mind the fact that it spaced out it's story as you progressed through loops.
That said, it was it's mechanics that were an overall more mixed experience. And that's because, whilst it -is- difficult, a fair bit of the challenge comes from some rough edges. For a title focused around the idea of devastating your enemies and puppeting their corpses, controlling your horde of minions feels altogether flawed. Directing your army is more akin to guiding a horde of leprosy ridden lemmings- as they often get stuck on objects, or distracted by someone moving at the periphery of your screen. The latter of which leads to chain reactions of multiple enemy groups swarming in on you.
Worse, if try and maintain your forces, their larger numbers can actually bar you from moving freely- and in a game where even basic mooks can shred through your health like butter, this becomes a serious problem.
Only further compounded by the fact that your minions are a bit- inept when it comes to attacking targets in a co-ordinated manner.
Which is a problem, since they represent a major portion of your offensive capability, as your basic attacks can essentially be summarized as 'Tragically inadequate', and your skills are often limited by a combination of RNG, and resource starvation- turning the tail end of runs into desperate slogs once attrition and time begins to rob you of any sort of momentum.
That's not to say the entirety of my experience with this game is bad- I did stick with it for 9 hours, in order to get to the -current- end point of the games 3rd stage, and it's 'Thanks for playing screen'. Something which gave me ample opportunity to face off against it's boss encounters, get a feel for the various enemies of each biome, and dabble with the spell and skill system.
But- there were some issues. To the point that I actually have a fairly in-depth video in the works @ www,youtube.com/c/CritHit - for those who want to see gameplay, and get a better idea of the complexities it brings to the table. But at the current juncture, it's a flawed experience- and one that has me closely following both the roadmap, and the developer updates for a more ideal time to return to the thick of things.
P.S. There'll also be a shorter version releasing over here, if you want a somewhat snappier summary.
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