Gratitude #13: Rift of the NecroDancer OST – Glass Cages

Rift of the NecroDancer really surprised me with how familiar-yet-unique its formula is. Though unreleased at the time of writing, its demo has been a lot of fun. Its ‘prequel’ of sorts, Crypt of the Necrodancer, shouldn’t need any introduction – it’s a ‘rhythm roguelike’ where everything moves to the beat of the music, challenging you to figure out rhythmic strategies to outmaneuver enemies through the level.

And so Rift of the NecroDancer takes those same enemies, and sticks them straight into a by-the-books, ‘hit the notes’ rhythm game. Instead of stepping on arrows, you now have Slimes which require two hits to defeat, Bats which switch lanes when you hit them, Harpies that move every two beats instead of one, and plenty more from the original game. They keep the same or similar rules in most cases, and I’m still surprised by how well it translates over.

The challenge of the game is in handling the enemy rules and behaviors, which means less of a focus on barraging the player with streams of notes (though the higher difficulty modes will dish out plenty of both). It’s also uniquely different to the trend of ‘sight-reading’ charts made for In The Groove and other rhythm games; Instead of switching tempos and changing up the playfield, it changes the rules of the notes instead, and ultimately achieves the same result. I’m anticipating what will happen when someone combines both of these styles of challenge together – either as a mod, or as a welcome surprise if RotND‘s developers already considered it for a boss fight.

Glass Cages is my favorite song in the demo. It’s mellow and chilled in a way that not many EDM songs are, especially in the rhythm game niche. The violinist’s performance is fantastic, and the synth pads harmonizing with it really ties the song together. Given that Crypt of the NecroDancer‘s original composer is returning here alongside a slew of guest artists, I can expect the full soundtrack will also be worth a listen.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *