Necrophosis Review

Dragonis Games, Necrophosis

Releasing last year on Steam, Necrophosis gained a positive following for its horror, macabre world with Lovecraftian inspiration. Necrophosis and its new DLC, Subconsciousness have now arrived on console as part of the ‘Full Consciousness’ package. It’s a title I’d been keeping tabs on via Steam, but kept myself waiting for the XBOX launch.

Now that this artistic full game is available on XBOX Series X/S and PlayStation 5, is it worth your time? Our spoiler-lite review.

Gameplay – Forsaken

If you were to watch a trailer for Necrophosis, you’d be right to think it is a spiritual successor to 2022 first-person horror, Scorn. And it is very much of that ilk. Necrophosis is a walking simulator, only a few hours in length and light on gameplay outside of its limited puzzles.

Necrophosis’s puzzles are rather basic and mostly consist of moving items – normally brains – from one location to the next, rather than solving a genuine brain teaser. Whilst this is okay for the first couple of sections, I felt that by halfway through the game I was tired of the games lack of creativity. Frustratingly, the games animations are regularly painfully slow, drawing out the process puzzles unnecessarily.

Outside of the A > B shifting of item puzzles, there are a few other locations where we can briefly play as a spider-like creature, or move around as larger other worldly beings, but it’s not enough to prevent the gameplay becoming stale. Even whilst in these, on paper, cool forms, all you do each time is move forward and press both triggers to interact with your obective. This may sound more negative than intended as mechanically Necrophosis is competent for its genre, it just has very little new ideas and plays what it does do, safe.

Visuals – Love the Craft of the World

Necrophosis’s shining light is its world design, atmosphere and mood. It’s bleak, it is bloody and it is beautiful. Spanning a handful of locations, each are solely unique and well-crafted by Dragonis Games. For a small development team, this pushes above its weight.

From underground lairs, to shining desert-like spaces, to cosmic backdrop locations the game does exceptionally well to delight your eyes, whilst retaining its intended horror and deathly undertones.

I have narrative issues with the NPCs of Necrophosis which you will read about shortly, however their design is terrific. Almost every character we engage with is entirely individual, with eerie, imposing cosmic horror designs. Their stature makes you feel inferior in every way, as they stare towards you, or approach your character in intimidating ways.

Story – A Vessel of Boredom

The story of Necrophosis and it’s gloriously grim world is set billions of years in the future, long since the universe had fallen. As an unnamed corpse we navigate this land ridden with the curse which shares its name with the game itself. This curse is tearing up the lands and inflicting decay on everything living or dead. Exciting prospect indeed. Regrettably, the execution and delivery leaves a lot to be desired.

My biggest complaint with Necrophosis is that its story is – a) difficult to make much sense of; and b) simply uninteresting. The first NPC you speak with at the very start of the game sets up plenty of intrigue and an interesting premise for the game, but by the time I’d reached the second area having spoke to several, confusion and boredom was setting in. Who are these characters? Why are they on my path? By the time I’d rolled credits I was left scratching my head as to what it was all for.

I’ve played many walking simulators, it’s one of my favourite genres and I love narrative-heavy games in general. However, Necrophosis’s attempts at cryptic storytelling all feels meaningless and it comes across that the games writers just tried too hard. Fans of Lovecraft’s works may find something of interest here, though I’m afraid most will be left as lost in this on-screen fictional nightmare as I was.

Regrettably everything you hear, and everyone you speak to, are uninteristing

To improve its story, I feel the game would have benefited from more environmental storytelling, that could have leant heavily into its pretty spectacular world, rather than being filled with convoluted information being offered by NPCs. And unfortunately, you spend far too much of your 2-3 hours listening to them share their tales of suffering, which made me want to embark on the highway to hell myself. There are collectibles in the stunning world of Necrophosis that deepen the lore, though rather than filling in knowledge gaps, they exacerbated my sheer bewilderment.

The intention of this and each of my reviews is to be story spoiler-lite. However, this is the first time I’ve been able to avoid spoilers whatsoever as I simply didn’t grasp what the game failed to communicate to me.

Conclusion – Drag Me to Hell

The world of Necrophosis is one of the finest I’ve virtually visited this year. I was drawn in to all of the game’s environments and spent plenty of time gazing at some of the exceptional surroundings and other assets Dragonis have crafted. Gameplay, though lacking, is satisfactory and fans of horror walking sims will enjoy what can comfortably be completed in one sitting.

Alas, it’s the story that relegates Necrophosis from being a good horror indie. Overly complex and, simply, boring this pulls the game apart. There will definitely be something in here for Lovecraftian fans and from the game’s PC launch I know it has resonated with some from that crowd. If, like me, you’re unfamiliar with that branch or storytelling, it’s very likely that this game will drag you to hell itself.