Necromanceers

the ifcomp is almost over and i havent reviewed any games at all! ive been busy this year but tbh it's also that compared to last year, this year just doesn't have a lot of games that are interesting to me. this one isnt quite my usual thing either, but i mostly liked it.

im not sure how much i should assume people have read my other reviews and not repeat myself or if that would be stupid because its not like im very active around here... anyway im a huge fan of queer fantasy and this is that but its like... dark fantasy? "weird fiction"? a little bit horror basically. so that parts kinda not my lane. or my area of expertise or w/e. it takes place in a world where theres necromancers and their being used by the military to fight wars by summoning the dead, and you play as one of these necromancers. or technically as their twin who they absorbed in the womb and who's soul lives inside them and makes decisions for them. the gameplay involves finding names of beings you can summon and then deciding who to summon when. the overall story is more or less linear but there's a surprising amount of variations from summoning different beings. you can solve your problems with a giant squid or a pirate or literally god or many other weird entities. theres also a lot of different endings. the endings often have to do with the necromancers girlfriend, a sort of bio punk fighter construct who isnt immortal but can heal from most wounds with enough time to recover. she gets badly injured over the course for the game events and sometimes she doesn't make it because of that, or sometimes the necromancer rewrites reality in a way that separates them. sometimes they're fully separated and sometimes they can still have a relationship to some extent (even if the girlfriend is dead, since, necromancy). the relationship is one of the sweetest and most human(? if that's an appropriate word here?) aspects of the game but i do have to say its a little hard to see what the girlfriend sees in the protagonist, who has negative rizz.

the worldbuilding throws a lot of concepts out that it mostly doesn't elaborate on, though by replaying and finding more names and using them in different places you can get more info on some things. the vibes are very cool but i would have enjoyed getting even more about the history and cosmology. if this was the kind of game that came with a compendium of unlockable lore entries i would've ate them up. but thats not really a criticism, i want more bc i like what's already there.

someone who was careful about keeping track of names and where they used them could probably see everything there is to see within 2 hours easily. unfortunately that was not me 😔. i found maybe like 2/3 of the names and then i kinda hit a wall. so this is def a game that wants you to pay close attention and probably take notes, although theres not really puzzles to solve or anything like that and i dont think its actually a difficult game if you're paying attention to it properly. i just have a bad habit of playing games in small chunks while im doing other stuff and i have the feeling that this wasn't the best way to experience this one. so thats on me! i still enjoyed it overall.