Indie week 13 || House of Necrosis

House of Necrosis is a fascinating mix of old school Survival Horror like Resident Evil and Dungeon Crawler RPG like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Your team is tasked to investigate an old mansion. Naturally, everything goes from the moment you arrive.
Now you are stuck in an endless limbo, haunted by dangerous creatures, getting lost in the maze like structure. Anxiously you run around the mansion, tackle the first crows that go down quickly but deal solid damage nonetheless. Everything escalates though, when enemies pile up and healing doesn’t come your way. Luckily for you, a kind soul saves you and drags you to a room. This room functions as our save space. We can buy and store items here; we return after every run, successful or not.

Your adventure revolves around runs into the dungeon. You gain equipment, level these up, learn about the enemies and tackle boss fights. You slowly gain knowledge about this place and how to deal with its unfriendly inhabitants. As long as you don’t die you will keep the items you carry. For a cheap price you will receive a rescue stone before every run. However, it’s your tactical decision when to use it. Is it save to venture in a bit longer? Should you return, sell your goods and buy new equipment? Will you be able to survive against the row of enemies waiting for you? Against the ominous creature you haven’t fought yet? Just remember, that you need to survive for three turns after using the crystal. Otherwise, your safety isn’t guaranteed.
Equipment separates into a defensive unit as well as a melee and a ranged weapon. They have a base damage and a bonus damage that scales with their levels. These levels are also kept between runs. Some weapons contain special attributes like knock-back, occasional healing or raised damage outside of hallways. These attributes make the weapon choices so much more interesting. Specific enemies will be easier to fight with a long range knife, even if the damage output is lower. Randomly saving up used ammo can be useful when you tend to be unlucky with the ammo rate.
On top of the creative equipment, enemies can drop spells. These persist between runs and can be used once per run. You can heal yourself in a pickle, warp to a random spot if enemies corner you, turn all the dangerous foes around you into weaker crows and so much more.
The combat starts simple, but turns into a play of tactics really quickly. This creates a fun gameplay loop, that easily turns into the habit of „just one more run“.
A neat feature I discovered by pure chance is a perspective change. The game plays in a top-down view, but by the press of a button you switch into a first person camera view which gives you a close view of the enemies. It’s a small feature that didn’t have to be programmed, but I love that it’s here.