NecroBoy: Path to Evilship

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

NecroBoy, released on PC in 2022 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023, is a character-based Puzzle game where players take the role of the titular Necroboy, a necromancer abandoned at birth and looking to get revenge on the society that shunned him.

The presentation here is dark but fairly cartoony, taking on the game’s topic matter with a whimsical tongue-in-cheek tone. The game’s visuals make use of simple cel-shaded 3D graphics, joined by somewhat crudely-drawn character portraits and backed by somewhat dour, moody music to fit the game’s darker themes.

I feel like this blend of dark and silly could have worked. Certainly, NecroBoy himself gives off an attitude that seems somewhat reminiscent of a character like Invader Zim. Unfortunately, without voiced characters, all the game’s text dialogue really falls flat and kills the game’s pacing, and this combined with the moody music adds up to a game that just doesn’t feel like it’s hitting the humorous tone it wants to.

At the very least, the gameplay does hit on an interesting premise, with players commanding the souls of the dead to hit switches, and occasionally take on hostile foes. The problem is that the process of commanding these minions can get pretty tedious very quickly, as just commanding one to go to a specific spot while the others remain where they are can mean deactivating the group so they stay put, re-activating the one you want to move because it was close to the others and got caught in your group command, moving yourself into position to point at the object to be interacted with and select it, waiting for the minion to move over there and do what you commanded, then deactivating that minion if you want it to stay in place, heading to wherever you want your other minions to go, selecting it, heading over to where your remaining minions are, activating them, and waiting for them to go to their new target.

There can be interesting puzzles in this format, sure. But it is just so very tedious and requires a lot of fiddling around to get them to do what you want. For some reason, you can’t command a single minion to go to a specific spot, you have to either command all of them, or you need to deactivate all of them before sending the command, and remember to clear the command after doing so or the remaining minions will try to head there when you wake them. And while you’re doing all of this, you have to be mindful of where your character is so the opening and shutting doors don’t lock you out of where you need to be.

Ugh, even just typing all of that out was tedious.

In the end, I do think that NecroBoy’s unique Puzzle gameplay will likely interest some players, but I think most will be put off by all the busywork needed to play the game, and by the presentation and story that’s far less interesting than it thinks it is.

tl;dr – NecroBoy is a Puzzle game where you command undead minions to do your bidding, which mainly comes in the form of hitting switches to solve puzzles. There are some cleverly-designed puzzles here, but the overall game is extremely tedious, and the loads of text to convey the story just isn’t as clever or interesting as the game seems to think. This game isn’t without its good qualities, but I think most will find it’s not worth their time.

Grade: C

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