iPhone developer Ryan Mitchell has just released Necromancer Rising [App Store], a large-scale, first-person RPG with an air of the macabre that should appeal to fans of dark and dank dungeon crawlers.
Necromancer Rising places you in the unenviable position of the last surviving Battle Priest of the king’s army with a wife and child that were recently slaughtered and buried, and — as if that wasn’t enough — robbed from their graves by the minions of the evil Necromancer, tunneling in caverns below. Your goal is to regain your former strength and visit grave vengeance upon the aforementioned Necromancer in the name of your beloved family.
The game features a highly detailed stats and equip system; your person features 16 equipment locations for weapons and armor allowing for a great many battle configurations. The author indicates that the game includes tens of thousands of items as well as 50,000 different weapons, in all. (All items are freely available to those who spend the time to find them, but for those who don’t mind paying for a bit of a short-cut, certain particularly useful items are also available as in-app purchases.) There are 50 different levels to explore (with 49 end-bosses) and each is dynamically generated upon entrance, so no level is ever the twice the same.
See the developer’s trailer video for a look at the game in play.
As yet, I’ve spent but a brief while with the title and find that what it lacks in polish in some areas (menu system, look controls, etc.), it makes up for with a pleasantly ghoulish atmosphere thanks to the creepy level and creature design, as well as the superb, moaning sound effects and evocative background score. The whole thing has a nice sort of campy Evil Dead feel to it that lends it a particular sort of charm that I find myself enjoying.
Our forum members have had a lot to say about this one. Hitch enjoyed it, while noting the lack of polish in some areas.
This is a hardcore RPG. If you’re a casual gamer, I’d probably pass as of now. It has good graphics, sounds, and gameplay elements/length, but a crappy menu system and messy controls keep the game from living up to it’s potential. Great game, but hard to work with.
8/10- Must have for PATIENT RPG fans, but needs quite a few updates to make it a must have for everyone.
SharpCarlos is enjoying it as well.
Overall, it’s scratching my dungeon crawl itch. There’s random loot in varying levels of quality with random affixes (just found a helmet that increases my intelligence). It runs smoothly on my 3GS. And it SEEMS like there’s a lot of game here. The dungeon is 50 levels deep, and if there continues to be several quests per level, it’ll take quite a while to burn through them.
Have a look at the game trailer (this early version of the bundled tutorial video might be helpful as well) to aid in your decision.
App Store Link: Necromancer Rising, $6.99
It's already been confirmed with video evidence, along with the truth that it DOES run on the iPhone OS.
there's been no video evidence. everything you think you've seen has been fake.
arn
Fine, be that way arn. ;)
Probably true, but I wanted to say what people would do to that comment. :P
I remember Stand Alone from Newton days. Good to see them still producing Apple handheld apps. :)
Well, here's a question. Will we need to buy separate iPad versions of apps we own on the iPhone? Or will one app run in both (possibly with specific features or larger resolution when running on the iPad)? I'm sort of assuming that we won't, but who knows - I can imagine separate apps if they are really functionally different, but otherwise i'd hope to have one app that would run in different ways depending on the device you were using it on.
McGraw seems to imply you can run both.
arn
I think it's really going to depend on if there is a separate section for tablet apps on the store. If it's just part of the normal rankings, I'm betting Apple wants a single app for all devices. Unfortunately, all those extra large graphics are going to bloat the app beyond the 10MB ATT download limit in most cases, which will hurt impulse sales on the iPhone. If devs can get away with it, I expect a separate tablet version for each app, if the combo version isn't under 10MB.
Could/Would developers get around that by offering a promo code with the sale of the smaller iPhone app?
We only get 50 promo codes per version right now, so unless Apple creates a new deal, we can't give out free stuff on a massive scale.
Wow... Talk about stealing Apple's thunder. I doubt Apple is happy about this leak. Obviously this CEO is trying to piggy back on the huge buzz.
I was surprised by this too, I would have thought he'd have signed an NDA, pertaining to any meetings they had with Apple. Yeah, I bet Steve Jobs has the literal smoke coming out of his ears about now.
Personally, I thinkk 'Daily News' has it spot on based on what we know...I hope I stand to be corrected.
well the i tablet is gonna be way out of my price range.. but i am having fun with sway sure would be cool to see sway on the tablet. maybe i could get better at sway with more room for my hands. laughs.
chris.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
If you really want to blow people's excitement levels through the roof, just announce something that will play CROSSWORD PUZZLES!!!
Game Changer. Pow.
lol. Yeah, I can see them lining up at the Apple store in droves, foaming at the mouth just gagging to play.....a crossword puzzle!
I just read that Daily Finance article linked above. What a bunch of crap. It's all about why that specific cubicle dweller won't get one. I know it's just an article on gadgets, but that's about as crappy as journalism gets.
I usually don't get too excited about new gadgets, but I can see this being very useful for someone like me. I don't know if it'll catch on the way they hope, but I won't be at all surprised if it does.
crosswords for 10 bucks? announced before apple's official conference? whoever announced this is lamer than lame. and no, I'm not buying this, just out of principle.
I personally don't think there's a market for it. It's going to be an expensive toy. What actually is it going to be used for? The only thing I can see is that it will be used for is an expensive eBook reader because of the screen size. You might as well buy a cheap netbook for watching movies, emailing or word processing. Or just use your iPhone, which is probably hell of a lot more practical when it comes to size and being mobile. It will sink later after all the hype has gone and tomorrows circus that's there's really no point to this device.
I disagree. I think anyone who works in a creative field will find this useful. Most people in creative fields rely on Macs already; a system like this is almost ideal.
I agree with you, but the creative field is specialised. Some people will find this useful. But I just think there is going to be a small market for this.
I use Crosswords all the time at the cottage. On April 3, Crosswords will be one of the first apps that I download again (assuming that
the ipad version will be stand alone)