Developed by Alchemy Sheep and published by Ravenage Games and IndieArk, NecroBouncer is a unique roguelike where you play as a hired bouncer for a bar. Featuring pixelated visuals, NecroBouncer is a love letter to some of the best roguelikes in the genre however with its basic combat mechanics, it is best for casual players rather than hardcore fans of the genre. Still, it packs enough punch to make it stand out in the crowd and deliver enough fun to keep you occupied for a decent number of hours. This is our review of NecroBouncer in which we cut through some naughty customers and die only to come back even stronger than before.
NecroBouncer starts after you wake up at a bar without any sort of recollection of the events that brought you there. Upon meeting with the bartender, you are offered the job of the bar’s bouncer and you are then responsible for tossing out the mischievous guests. After a brief intro to in-game mechanics, you are then left on your own as you start from the basement of the club and gradually move to the upper floors, clearing out enemies and throwing out the bar’s kingpins causing problems for the owner of the bar. While the game is a roguelike, it gives you the option of choosing a starting costume for yourself which unlocks a unique ability for you to use in the game. For example, the default dress allows you to summon zombies that attack your enemies. You have to unlock the remaining two with in-game progression and then pick whichever you want to play with depending on your playstyle.
The levels for each floor of the bar are played out in the form of a tree where you choose which room you want to tackle next. Your decision sets your course for the entire floor and each room has a unique attribute to it. Depending on this, you can pick whichever room you want to pick, and then you have to stick by it. All of the rooms are marked according to their types such as Bounce Room, Relic Room, Pillar Room, and more. The much harder rooms are reserved for later floors and during the starting levels, you will only have a few types of rooms available to you. Each room brings its own challenge for you to complete, and you can easily understand their types after a few playthroughs. The challenges range from killing a certain number of enemies in the Bounce Room, putting down pillars in their correct places in the Pillar Room, and unlocking new Relics for your run at the end of Relic Rooms.
Like I said before, you have to choose a path for yourself, and all of the rooms are marked on the map clearly so you can determine which room you want to tackle next and after that. After you have picked a path, you can tackle only those rooms that come in its path next. Based on this, you can choose your random path during each run and since the levels are generated randomly during each run, even if you choose the same rooms during multiple rooms, they will be unique during each run. The game is not really heavy when it comes to RPG mechanics. However, as you pick relics and grind the levels, you will continue to level up and pick up additional items that will make you better automatically each time you replay the game. You will get to choose what you want as well because you cannot have anything so there is a choice mechanic involved when it comes to choosing rewards as well. Picking a room with the Bar icon unlocks the shop for you at the end of that particular room and you can purchase some helpful items from it using gold.
There are a lot of different types of enemies that you can fight in NecroBouncer and each floor you progress to brings new and harder types of enemies for you to counter. The initial levels offer much easier enemies to fight however as you progress to later rooms, their numbers are increased in great levels to ensure that even the lowest level enemies offer you a great challenge in the game. There are both melee and ranged enemies in the game and the best bit about them is that each one gives a small hint before they attack you giving you a chance to evade their attacks and save your previous health. For example, the ranged enemies give you a hint of their incoming attack’s direction that you can see and evade in the opposite direction to escape their attack. Similarly, melee enemies give you unique hints as well and if you are curious-eyed, you will easily learn their attack styles and patterns. Some of your initial runs will be understanding how in-game mechanics work and learning the enemies and how they attack. Once you have a clear understanding of how things work, you will really start acing the levels and pushing through them.
For attacking the enemies, you have your basic melee attack and a ranged attack. The melee attack has no cost, and you can land it as much as you can however, for your ranged attacks, you must have enough mana. For most of my runs, I noticed that the game is pretty forgiving in this manner and there are plenty of mana pickups most of the time that you can use to replenish your mana. The starting levels are much more forgiving than later levels, so you need to keep this in mind when it comes to your melee attacks. Apart from these two attacks, you have your unique dress skill which is unique for all three dresses available in the game. These range from support to offensive so it all boils down to your own personal preferences when it comes to choosing them. Apart from these three skills, the game does not really offer any other skills that you can use during combat, so it does not have a lot of depth which makes it much easier for casual players.
This lack of unlockable skills or abilities is tackled by having tons of combat modifiers in the game in the shape of relics and items. NecroBouncer has a lot of different relics and items that you can purchase from the bar shop or find randomly in chests after completing rooms that offer you a chest upon their completion. These relics and items do not give you new skills or abilities to actively use in combat, but they give you different buffs or debuffs too in some cases depending on your luck. Since these relics and items are obtained through random chests so whatever comes out of it is purely your luck. Coming to your defense, you have a limited amount of health, but you do have a dodge ability which allows you to dodge incoming attacks. If you lose all your health, you will end your run or as the game calls it, end your day at the bar and unlock some new items and bonuses to use in your next run.
Most of your runs will end prematurely and reaching the end of the game is no easy task even if you have grinded a lot. Each floor of the bar concludes with a boss fight which really tests your abilities. The boss battles do come with an annoying mechanic where they become invincible for most parts of the battle and you are left with nothing but to avoid their incoming attacks. Most attacks are like bullet-hell titles where you will need extreme precision to avoid them. The boss battles are not my favorite aspect of the game, but you have to clear one on each floor in order to proceed to the next floor of the game. The boss designs are pretty cool, but the fights are not that good. If bullet hells are your jam then maybe you will enjoy the boss battles as well but for me, they were a
NecroBouncer comes with a fun mode where the built-in Twitch integration allows viewers of your channel to either help you during your run or make it even harder. In a Twitch run, viewers can help the player choose what artifact to choose and help them with additional health and mana pickups as well. The viewers can also join the evil side and become an actual enemy in the game to make it tougher as well. This is a very cool feature of the game, and it certainly goes in the favor of the title. Coming to the technical aspect of NecroBouncer, the game runs pretty stable and there are no game-breaking bugs of any sort in the game. The AI plays just like it should and gives you a tough time in the game just like any other challenging roguelike. The game is not too complex when it comes to its dungeon-crawling and world design, but it still manages to deliver a really good experience even if you are not that much into roguelikes. There is not much to expect when it comes to story or even lore here but the gameplay is solid and there’s a lot or replayability potential.
Final Verdict:
NecroBouncer manages to deliver a great roguelike experience with its challenging dungeon-crawling and simplistic mechanics. It is a great title for players who do not want to get into too many complexities yet want to enjoy a solid roguelike with all of its mechanics in place. The visuals are pretty decent, and so is the audio design. This combined with the exceptional amount of content the game offers in terms of its relics, items, and enemies gives you a chance to spend hours upon hours in the game. If you love playing roguelikes and want to dive into another good one, NecroBouncer should be on your playlist and even if you occasionally enjoy the genre and want to have a good time, even then NecroBouncer is a decent title to add to your collection.
Final Score: 8.0/10
