Necrosmith is a lot of things. It’s a necromancer simulator; it’s a bullet hell; it’s a strategy game; it’s a tower defence game. It sounds muddled, but it’s actually not. Basically, each run kicks off with you in your tower with only a handful of skeleton body parts to your name. Each creature you make needs to have two arms, two legs, a body, and a head. Outside of that though, which of each part you give any given creature is up to you.
Let’s say you get a zombie arm holding a sword, a tentacle, two harpy legs, an orc body, and a vampire head, you can put them onto your magical table and resurrect them as one thing. Your horrifying monster will then stagger out onto the battlefield, and start exploring as it likes. The same is true of all of your creations.
They’ll roam around looking for places to conquer, technology for you to upgrade, other monster parts, things to fight, and even teleporter gates. While they’ll all move around with their own will naturally, you can issue them commands like telling them to stand still to protect an area. You can also choose to take control of one of them at a time and move them around as you like.
When your tower eventually falls, you go back to the start screen, level up whatever you can afford to do so, and try again. As you progress you’ll unlock powerful spells, find easier ways to get new body parts, and unlock awesome technology. It’s a simple but very effective way of giving you a bit of progress, and the game does a good job of subtly seducing you into giving it one more go, even when it’s way past your bedtime or your cats are screaming at you. There’s also a sequel coming at some point soon (apparently), so now’s a good time to jump into the Necrosmith and find your feet.
