When Cadence stays on rhythm, the entire world lights up like a disco dance floor. Survival depends on learning and mastering these patterns, as well as collecting coins and diamonds to buy temporary power ups in each level or permanent ones in the lobby to which Cadence returns each time she is killed. Using only the four arrow keys to move and dig, attack and retreat, Cadence has to evade and defeat enemies who approach and attack on the beat, or every other beat, or every fourth beat. This system of rhythm-driven action creates combat that is simultaneously real-time and turn-based. When you find the shopkeeper, he adds his voice to the music in a soaring digitized aria. Driven (and constrained) by the same throbbing beat, rhythmic beasts will try to prevent Cadence from penetrating any deeper into the VIP areas of their fiendish eternal rave, and, as is only appropriate, they do so with style.Įven when they’re standing in place, skeletons shimmy to the beat, and before they leap toward Cadence they throw their hands in the air like they just don’t care. The hero, Cadence, has lost her beating heart to a diabolical sorcerer, and now can move only in time with the music that saturates her environment. Many of the elements are familiar-swords and dungeons, slimes and skeletons-but Ryan Clark’s dungeon-crawler distinguishes itself from simple nostalgia by tying its activity directly to the driving 4/4 beat of its soundtrack. Crypt of the NecroDancer is a game with a great deal of verve.

Crypt of the necrodancer