Was The Unliving Dead On Arrival?

Hey Tappers- While I did a long form video for this,  I also figured there's going to be folks here who just want something to read- or who might be deaf.

So- This articles for you-  My thoughts on Rocketbrush Studio's The Unliving- After I cracked open the casket and gave it a good gander.

Dead Men Tell Tales

The Unlivings basic premise is simple enough- you take the role of a Dark Sorceror after a ritual gone wrong- one which leaves him on the verge of death, with a missing memory, and a shattered soul.

Not that it does a single thing to slow down his murderous rampage- since he's both a talented Necromancer -and- his botched spell had one specific upshot. Despite everything that went horribly awry, one piece of his soul remains- one which serves to tether him to the world so he can die, again and again.

Which is fairly important- since, the games story unfurls over the course of the deluge of deaths directed your way.  Some of it is the simple sliver of dialogue that the hub NPCS provide- bits of backstory helpfully provided due to your convenient case of amnesia, which also help to flesh out your peers.

Other bits, however, come from your encounters with NPCS during the various stages, and the boss fights they culminate it-  as the rematches are not simply a mechanical experience, but one that's reflected in the narrative.

That said, whilst it helped to incentivize starting a new run to get more answers- it did lead to certain problems. Specifically, I had some dialogue play out of order- with my allies hinting at the location of one of the soul severed mcguffins . . . after I'd acquired it.

Whoops. That small stumbling point aside- I was still rather fond of the story, as it gradually fleshed out it's cast, and initiated me into their motivations, and the greater mysteries which defined the adventure.

Master Of Puppets

I wish I could say the same about the gameplay. Which is weird, since the basic formula -sounds- fun. Your protagonist is a squishy mage- forcing you to rely on your talent for dominating the dead. And The Unliving doesn't actually skimp here. Each stage has it's own distinct flavors of enemies to encounter, and ultimately enslave- a process which is satisfying not only because of their unique talents when fought, but also when revived- allowing you to create fairly diverse armies.

That is, provided you can maintain them. First off, it can sometimes be tricky to add new recruits- because you -need- to kill everyone in a given enemy group before you can start ressing. While sometimes this is simply the case of your forces getting repelled before they can finish the job, other times, it's a case of a single enemy running away- or worse, a glitched incidence where whole groups simply...remain dead.

Which is extra miserable, since- well, the dead decay. And while you waste time running around potentially trying to recoup forces from a bloody bout- your other troops are potentially turning to dust- or lose enough max health that they risk being obliterated in the starting moments of your next skirmish.

Thankfully, this isn't necessarily a net loss- Because if you choose to simply -allow- your troops to decay, or actively sacrifice them to activate their special abilities- you can access to the 'bone dust' resource. Bone dust is a run specific resource that lets you upgrade your weapon, and can also be traded for gold if you're short at the shop.

That said, given you get nothing when an enemy kills your bone boys- it really behooves you to properly manage your troops.

Especially since it's not necessarily in your favour to simply build up your forces into massive groups. That picture of 100 above? Not even -close- to my record. I hit close to 200 at one point. But, a distinct number of issues began to arise.

Like, being unable to move through a pack of braindead bonebags, while enemies tossed AOES at me- which I couldn't even see due to how cluttered they were. They also like to get stuck on things, which not only tends to create chokepoints- it also means you're constantly losing portions of your forces.

Worst of all, however- is the simple fact that they're not even that good at following orders.

Want them to tactically pull back? That's nice- they're not -going- to, though. Which is made especially bad since they have a habit of being -just- aggressive enough to poke at a nearby enemy group or few and provoke them into attacking- but not aggressive enough that a large portion is just going to sit there and twiddle their thumbs, even when there's ample room for them to swarm around what's there.

It's. Yeah. A bit of a problem- but even with all these faults, you're still far better off with a hefty entourage, because this game -is- legitimately difficult. For instance, those skull shaped segments of the health bar? While you can recover them when they're partly depleted- either through certain spells, sacrifice abilities, or the occasional potion- Once they're fully depleted, you can't heal them back- and are actually forced to purchase or find new 'Life Sparks' to fill them out. 

Really, the only 'upshot' to their fragility is that they activate an ability upon breaking- casting a spark specific skill, as well as granting you a few seconds of invulnerability so you can try and get your bearings.

And, you may notice I've mostly ignored your basic attack- and that's because even with upgrades, it'll slap like a wet noodle. The scaling just is not great- and unfortunately, I had some rather bad experiences when I did invest heavily- as the game decided to bug out and not only gimp the damage of the only attack I liked (the spear)  to an embarrassing 1/10th of it's starting damage, arbitrarily- it then rolled back my character by an entire level. I still can't figure out why- unless that was the games way of hinting that I should die to progress the story. But at that case, I would have preferred for it to just sink a knife into my back, It would have been cleaner.

It also didn't stop me-because, you do have more than your basic arsenal, you have spells you can both find and unlock- and, these do some heavy lifting. While they still do suffer limitations- with any of the ones which cost life force being a -major- issue due to the limited means of recovering that resource- you're not strictly limited to that.

Other spells you can find might use the bone, blood or souls of fallen enemies as a fight progresses- or you can gain passive sacrifice modifiers that- beyond dealing damage, or creating healing areas- can also just -Produce- those resources. Which makes spells that might otherwise have exorbitant resource costs become a stable of your abilities- and enable you to actually survive kiting a mob of enemies around the room.

At least long enough to get a fresh batch of baddies at your command.

That said- I do take issue with the fact that the spells are handled a bit oddly. Specifically, while you have 3 active spell slots- each spell you find is -associated- with a given slot, and there's nothing preventing the game from simply offering you a series of spells which would all occupy the same slot. A slot that you might already have occupied by a more useful, higher level spell.

Which, at that point- it might just be time to give up the ghost.

Not that dying is necessarily a bad thing. This is a roguelite, after all. Meta-resources which gradually provide power-ups and more variety to your arsenal are both at play here- though, there are some quirks here.

The first quirk, and the bleakest- is the simple fact that although the upgrades which provide more variety to your Lifespark types, and the spells you can find work as intended- the ones that would modify the Necromancer are- uh. Less functional. Read- a good number of them just don't seem to work right, or scale correctly. Which- is definitely frustrating when you sink a bunch of resources into them.

One of them in particular promised to boost the Necromancers personal attack when his minions bit the dust and he was left alone- but uh, no dice.

That said, the other odd quirk is the simple fact that certain upgrades are narratively gated- and will require you to ramp through the game -multiple- times to acquire them. Whilst I imagine this will factor into the games narrative pacing-

Well . . .

I comfortably reached the end of The Unliving and I didn't feel overly compelled to continue grinding away to unlock a new batch of meta upgrades. Not when I felt like I had to fight the game itself- including having runs get scuffed by things like- an optional arena locking it's doors -after- I cleared it, and simply refusing to let me out.

Dying Pretty

And this is -despite- the fact that the game offers an aesthetically pleasing spectacle to rampage through. I'm serious when I say the game provides a decently diverse cast of antagonists to annihilate and reanimate- and I thoroughly enjoyed that their undead variants -felt- different from their living peers.

I also enjoyed both the soundtrack, and, more importantly - the simple fact that they'd avoided the cardinal sin of 'endless attack and hit sounds' even in massive groups.

Post-Mortem

That said- I needed more. So much of this experience was marked with frustration- and whilst I understand that is often the case with early access, as it essentially serves as an open form of beta testing, and for the community to provide feedback- my initial experience was ultimately exhausting.

I think the Unliving has potential, I really do- with both an interesting concept on a narrative and mechanical front.

That said- I'm at a point where I'd much rather wait to see a number of the items from the Unlivings' Roadmap get implemented.

They have, after all released one over @ https://www.team17.com/the-unliving-2022-2023-roadmap-for-steam-early-access/ .  ...And, more importantly, the developers actually got back to me when I shot them a detailed list of all the bugs I encountered- so a small part of me is hopeful that things will get better, and the experience livens up, at least a little.

Which is to say- whilst I'm not delegating this title to the purgatory segment of my Steam Wishlist- I'm definitely in a more wait and see mindset.

And hey- Depending on if you folks ask, I might write something new about it, when it finally fully releases.