Necromanceers

Necromanceers

I enjoyed this game. It wasn't what I expected at first, or at second.

One thing Pacian does very well is creating characters that feel alive (or, in this game, often dead) with distinct and interesting personalities. Another thing Pacian does well is worldbuilding that answer many questions but always leaves more.

You play as a necromanceer who can summon the dead if they know their name. You're fighting in a war against the armies of Godde and the saints, and you have to stay alive and keep your friends alive. Or not; they can come along even if they die.

This game is mostly linear with stopping points where you can choose who to summon. There are a lot of options, and each one you pick can have subtle effects on what happens next, like opening up new names to find in different branches. The total number of ending combinations is huge.

On one hand, replaying the game can get tedious reading the text over and over. On the other hand, jumping to chapters helps speed things up. On the other hand, it can be easy to lose track of who you summoned. On the other hand, there's a compendium to help you. And so on.

I do like the idea. I don't really think the idea could have been implemented any better than it has been (maybe highlighting text you've never seen before in yellow once you've summoned a specific spirit?) Loved the variety in endings.

Oh, that reminds me, endings. The ending came very suddenly for me. I didn't feel in any way that we were close to an ending; the plot arc didn't feel like it was heading for that. Looking back, it makes sense the game was structured that way, as with so many endings there is no way to build a plot arc that fits them all.

Interestingly, there was another game this year, Maybe you'll respect this dead person instead, that has the premise of being a mostly linear story where you have to choose at each junction which of a pre-set number of spirits to summon. As a connection in a different direction, it's interesting that both CEJ Pacian and Ryan Veeder made games this competition where you have a large set of named people and a different ending for each named person.