11 November

Balance Pass Patch 0.8.5.7 Is Live

This small patch will address many of the balance issues introduced by 0.8.5.5. The changes are as follows.

Very big thank you to players SlyGoat, SirShua and Honorable_D for taking the time to write up the extensive feedback that made this patch possible. Thanks, guys!

Gameplay

AOE Damage does half agro than DD.
Nekro Health/Damage Upgrade will significantly increase Skelebones/Zombeef health and damage to allow them to scale better into late game.
Blood is more scarce across the game and will be a bit harder to obtain.
Townie AOE attacks limited to 5 enemies.
Trinket Slot Upgrade also increases trinket proc chance by 3% per point.
Nekro Powers Points drop more often.

Outcast

Nerf Scythe: Decrease damage by small amount.
Nerf Power Armor: Armor from 65 to 15. (This may seem like a lot, but within the combat system anything above 25 is ignored and is only used for agro purposes. So this is actually a minor Nerf.)
Buff Omega Blades: Blades will deal 100 extra agro damage to all units per tick. Tick frequency increased. Damage increase.

Grimm Keeper

Buff Skull Torpedo: More damage/ AOE range.
Buff Bone Shield: Gives temporary 100 HP in addition to armor.
Bone Bomb: Deal medium damage, only affect enemies, increase stun time to 6 seconds.

Skelebones

Slasher: Buff armor upgrade.
Archer: Armor upgrade will upgrade damage instead of armor.
Archer: Small increase to DPS.
All upgrades cost 1 sin.

Zombeef

Plaguer: Gets the highest HP boost from Nekro Health Upgrades, allowing for a better late game unit.
All upgrades cost 1 sin.

Horror

Vampiric: Lifesteal buffed.
Vampiric: Damage buffed.
Vampiric: Health buffed by small amount.
All upgrades cost 1 sin.

Darkseed

Spore Thrower/Sharpshooter deal no agro damage.
Blood reduction upgrade changed to blood refund upgrade so you can reclaim the darkseed's blood when you're done.
Blood Cost lowered to 4 for both specializations.
Sharpshooter: Significant buff to damage.
Sharpshooter: Unit cap base change to 2.
All upgrades cost 1 sin.

Airbane

Hellfire: Massive reduction to buff potency.
Recharge upgrade changed to an upgrade that allows the Acid Bane to deal damage and the Hell Fire Bane to heal minions.

Meat Mouth

Instigator: Added an AOE stun chance to his base attack, making him more relevant in fights where tanks are already present.

Punge

Base Cost Increased to 10 sins.
All upgrades cost 1,2,3 respectively.
Health upgrade increased to 50 hp / upgrade point.
Magma Punge: Base health reduced from 350 to 300.
Magma Punge: Base damage agro per hit increased from 200 to 400. This will allow him to keep agro.

Crust King

All upgrades cost 1,2,3 respectively.

Evil

Both Evils are now temporary summons.
Phasewalker health no longer bound to Nekro, but he can now be targeted as normal.
Blood Cost Upgrade changed to "Spawn Time Upgrade."
Vanguard: Small damage reduction.
Blood Cost increase from 6 to 8.

Shade

Mimic: Decrease of damage.
Both: Decrease in CD.
Guardian: Huge increase in health; allowing for longer sustainability.
Guardian: Adds AOE armor buff to minions around the Nekro when cast.

Trinkets

Bone Shard: In addition to the proc chance, eating 5 corpses of the same type in a row will spawn a Skeleton.
Townie Hammer: No longer does critical damage. Also, deals 6 second AOE stun. Each attack increases proc chance. Resets on use.
Dark Pact: Each kill increases the proc chance. Resets chance on use.
Jar of Filth: Each attack increases the proc chance. Resets on use.
Mortis Tome: Chance is offset by enemy tier. For example, a hunter will have a far higher chance to proc than a farmer.
Jar of Goo: Each attack increases proc chance. Reset on use.
Healing Pot: Every 10 corpses consumed will spawn the pot.
Boom Bomb: Every 20 units killed will proc the Boom Bomb.

Please keep the feedback coming. There's bound to be some new bugs introduced with this patch, as well as the possibility of balance having gone too far in the other direction, making units less viable. I reckon one more patch to fully balance all the new units.

For our next big patch, you can next look forward to new levels and new enemies!

1 comments Read more

31 October

Mega Patch 8.5 - New Summons and Levels!

Welcome to Nekro Halloween Patch 8.5! This patch represents the biggest accomplishment for us since our release on Early access!
We have a MASSIVE amount of new content to play. The biggest changes are the inclusion of new summons, summon specializations and Nekro skills.

Overview

New Summons: You can now summon Zombies, Skeletons, the Crust King and The Evil.
Summon Specializations: Every single summon in the game has been redesigned from the ground up to include two summon variants. For example, the Zombie can be specialized into a fodder unit or a tank. You can switch dynamically between the two types to better fit your army's composition.
Nekro Skills: Each Nekro class now has 3 unique skills that can be unlocked. These not only provide more to do on a moment to moment basis within the game, but add a new layer of strategy.
New Level: A special Halloween Zombie level has been added to the game. This level extends the tutorial and allows new players time to get familiar with the game without getting overwhelmed.
There is a TON more we added. Check the patch notes below for a full breakdown.

Disclaimer
We will be overhauling multiplayer next. As a result, multiplayer is temporarily disabled.
Because of the huge amount of changes, there is bound to be some imbalance with the new units. Please leave any suggestions and feedback in the Steam Forums.
Because of all the new changes old game saves have been deleted. Your achievement progress, however, remains in tact.

Build 8.5.5 Patch Notes
All summons have been redesigned from the ground up.
Summon upgrades are now iterative. You can put multiple points into each upgrade, which apply across both summon specializations.
New Level: Dead Man Walking - This level introduces players to gameplay and provides more backstory on how the Nekro got his powers.
Nekro Power Points are now in game drops.
Complete rework of Trinket drop system.
Agro system has been completely reworked to ensure the Nekro is not 'focused' at the start of a fight. Enemies will spread out and attack your minions if applicable.
Nekro Skills: Each Nekro class now has 5 powerful skills they can unlock.
With the inclusion of Nekro skills, players can now swap which key their attacks are bound to without having to go into the options menu.
The Nekro will regain health to the total amount of his last hit. This will allow for more strategy in player zoning and movement.
Added new Nekro upgrades such as the highly requested movement speed and the ability to unlock trinket slots.
4 brand new trinkets: The Heart of War, The Skull of the Undead King, The Tinkerer's Goggles and Book of the Dead.
Rework of many old trinkets to fit better with the new Nekro skills/summon specilizations.
Huge amount of new sound FX added to the game such as combat sounds, ambient sounds and rework of voice over for many units and monsters.
New intro sounds: Summons will greet you with a growling hello when they are unlocked.
UI changes such as a new world map, new easier to read font, scrolling story text, polish on all menu items and text icons have been added.
The Shade has been completely redesigned, and is actually useful now. Really useful.
Completely reworked corpse system: some units now require corpses, while some do not use corpses at all, while others get benefits from being spawned from a corpse. This is to better provide more unique feels to each summon specialization.
Added new unit: Zombie - A extremely cheap fodder unit that can be specialized into a light tank.
Added new unit: Zombie Crawler - When the zombie dies he turns into the Zombie Crawler. The crawler is slow, weak, and dies very easily but provides one more target to distract enemies. Additionally, he provides a corpse from which to make new Zombies, ensuring the Nekro can continuously make new units.
Added new unit: Skeleton - A powerful light tank/DPS unit that can be specialized into a Skeleton Archer to provide ranged support.
Added new unit: Crust King - An interesting alternative to the Punge, the Crust King provides tanking support with small spawns called Crustlings. Crustlings die almost instantly, but provide fantastic agro management by distracting enemies. Can be specialized into a brawler/tank.
Added new unit: The Evil - The Evil is a very strong DPS unit that is extremely weak but outputs massive ranged damage. He can be specialized to give up all damage abilities and become an untargetable support/healer. The Evil is bound to the Nekro's health pool, meaning when the Nekro gets hit, the Evil gets hit.
Added summon specialization for Horror: Horrors can now become vampire horrors and turn their damage into healing for the Nekro, or becomes swarm Horrors; highly fragile DPS units that can be spawned in mass.
Added summon specialization for Darkseed: The Darkseed can be split into a low-range AOE burst unit, or a long-range single-target sniper.
Added summon specialization for Airbane: The Airbane can be specialized to debuff the enemy and slow them down, or provide a buff for your own units, increasing their damage, speed and armor.
Added summon specialization for Meat Mouth: The Meat Mouth can now become a blood-producing harvestor, ensuring the Nekro always has a fresh supply of blood, or can be specialized into a powerful tank that holds agro and deals light AOE damage.
Added summon specialization for Punge: The Punge can be broken up into a light tank/AOE DPS burster with a medium health pool, or specialize into an extremely powerful tank with a massive armor and health pool that deals almost no damage.
Added summon specialization for Shade: The Shade can be specialized into a massive damage-dealing flying unit. She acts as a second weapon to the Nekro, shooting wherever he is looking. Conversely, she can be specialized to provide a damage shield that absorbs all damage from any angle facing the player's cursor.
Added Alchemist skill: Laser Totem - Summons a laser totem that shoots at enemies. If the totem is blasted with the Alchemist's main attack, the totem will shoot 3 times faster.
Added Alchemist skill: Super Pot - Gives all friendly units +150 hp for 20 seconds.
Added Alchemist skill: Fear Pot - Applies a debuff to all enemies hit with the Fear Pot. The debuff stuns the target for 3 seconds, as well as deals a low-damage DOT. If the Nekro shoots the target while the debuff is applied, all damage from the Nekro is multiplied by 2.
Added Grimm Keeper skill: Bone Torpedo - Fires a torpedo in a straight line from the Nekro. The torpedo needs two seconds to arm itself, and travels very slowly but hits targets for massive critical damage.
Added Grimm Keeper skill: Bone Bomb - Deals no damage, but knocks back all units from the target location and applies a strong stun to all enemies, clearing their agro and forcing them to acquire new targets.
Added Grimm Keeper skill: Bone Shield - Gives the target summon or the Grimm Keeper super high armor for 20 seconds.
Added Outcast skill: Power Scythe - Throws out a powerful AOE scythe blade that deals damage once on the way out, and again when it returns.
Added Outcast skill: Power Armor - Creates a mirror image of the Nekro, absorbing 95% of damage for 25 seconds.
Added Outcast skill: Omega Blades - Puts the Nekro into a spin, dealing knockback critical damage to any enemy near him for 7 seconds.
The wolves are no longer bright pink. Yay?
So many bug fixes we can't even count. Bugs got fixed, that's all you have to know. ;)

13 comments Read more

weavah9

308 products in account

Recommended

4.1 hrs on record

Posted: 9 December

Same subgenre of RTS as Sacrifice, a game I quite enjoyed.

Same sort of flavour as Dungeon Keeper. Which I also quite liked.

Pretty solid game, really. It needs more levels, and more polishing, but it looks good so far.

Also seems to have less women in it than the first set of Star Wars movies, but we'll see how it goes as development progresses.

Was this review helpful? Yes No

StaticFire

167 products in account

3.8 hrs on record

Posted: 23 December

A fantastic indie game that surprised on every level. Great world, great humor, great characters, and satisfying gameplay. It's a tad short right now, but I can't wait until they put more content into the game!

Crayven

110 products in account

5.2 hrs on record

Posted: 29 December

Yes yes yes, a thousand times yes. I mean god, this game could have been sold as a finished product a while back and you can play it just like a full game now. they keep adding more, tweeking more and showing the game the love that it deserves. if you even have a slight intrest, get it and you wont be disapointed.

Vardas

32 products in account

3.1 hrs on record

Posted: 5 November

This game is quite awesome! Do not be fooled by its Early Access tag, This is a far more finished/polished product than hundreds of others being sold as full games on Steam.

Short review:

You progress through levels of increasing difficulty and different baddies. In some levels your objective will simply be to @KILL THEM ALL!@ while in others you'll also have to complete some other task in the towns.

Your Necromancer (Nekro) class determines your playstyle. There is a brawler, grenadier and ranged Nekro, all with different skills and powers.

They all however have one common theme, which is summoning. You can unlock 10 different types of summons and each of these has a variant that you can switch between on the start of a level to tweak its abilities and attacking style. This allows for a surprisingly deep range of compositions as you can tweak your "army" to match your abilities and complement your other summons, and you can do so differently on each level.

The Nekro himself is relatively fragile so you'll need to manage your minions well. Deciding where to spend your early points of summoning resource (you use blood collected from corpses/enemies) and which ones to prioritise summoning in order to face the first sets of enemies and start adding more units to your army ia pretty awesome and makes you strategically try to plan ahead.

Even when you've reached the "peak" of your power however and have summoned 10-15 units, you still need to manage the enemy groups carefully with your skills and by prioritising targets, because if your army targets different enemies in a large group you'll find yourself without summons and running for your life very quickly.

All in all this is an incredibly fun little game, and is well worth the asking price imo even if it's in Early Access, which I usually stay far away from as it's such a gamble.

One last thing I want to note:
The developers aren't afraid to completely overhaul systems and parts of their game in order to make it more fun and interesting. A lot of the points I mentioned above were only introduced in the latest patch, and improved where the old game had some big problems with balance and being able to manage summons/enemy aggro. However the devs have made bold and frankly quite big changes to the overall game which have made a huge difference and are a great improvement on the original Early Access release.

I'd give this a solid 8/10 (before the patch this would've been a 6). Keep it up guys, eager to see how good it'll be when it's out of Early Access!

TheUnnormalGamer

114 products in account

0.5 hrs on record

Posted: 20 July

Played game at rtx. Fell in love with it.
Pros
Art style if fantastic.
Voice acting is amazing.
Love the gameplay.
cons.
Im in newyork for two weeks so i cant play it

Undead possum

97 products in account

11.7 hrs on record

Posted: 19 July

well i dont do this often but this game really grabbed me its fun, not just another walkthrough, bad guy games are always the funnest.

gelon

179 products in account

13.1 hrs on record

Posted: 4 October

in the current version the campaign only takes a couple of hours to complete, but the gameplay is pretty excellent and more content is on the horizon.

[LINUX] Seven

158 products in account

20.2 hrs on record

Posted: 8 October

this game has an awesome and very unique artstyle, with a ton of replayability. its early access but i trust them to add more content in the near future.

its very unique strategy game with rpg elements and at the same time it is some sort of necromancer simulator :). thats the best way i can describe this game cuz honestly i have never seen anything like it and thats a good thing. i can recomend this to everyone who's looking for something unique, different and beautiful.

oh yeah... there is a lot of gore and i mean a lot :)

broihon

1,140 products in account

4.5 hrs on record

Posted: 25 August

Awesome game, recommended.

FreemanOnFire

17 products in account

Posted: 30 August

really good game. amazing particle effects, really talented staff, and they also listens to the community

SirShua

27.6 hrs on record

Posted: 20 October

darkForge is a squad of people from various larger companies like blizzard, sony and microsoft, so a nice blend of AAA talent without the AAA restraints and demands, and for their first project, they're shaping up to be an awesome dev team.
Only a couple levels in but this game is already a fantastic play. It's story while actually quite grim, has a fun-lighthearted delivery, kind of like a darker gloomier Overlord. The game plays smoothly, and you are always doing something, and are always summoning monsters, corrupting wildlife into monsters, making corpses to summon monsters, devouring corpses to summon monsters or leaving a pool of bodies to lure a large enemy force back to so you can spawn monsters and heal through out a fight. The soundtrack is an awesome electronic mix that gets you ready for making slaughter. The game itself is a little hard to look at graphically, and some of the larger monsters obscure a hefty amount of the action, as well as yourself, but all in all this is a great use of 20 bucks, and I'm excited for release.

EDIT: Having now finished the game with one character, the current iteration does feel very short. The current upgrade system consists of basic health/damage/blood(magic resource), and augmenting summoned creatures in between levels, as well as equipping certain trinkets (love the Totalbiscuit hat )

brokbrok

245 products in account

2.2 hrs on record

Posted: 30 October

Can't wait to see how this game shapes up. It looks great so far.

Standin.Baimo

10 products in account

3.6 hrs on record

Posted: 28 September

This game is great, the gameplay is awesome, it seems promising, will add a multiplayer too. In this game u will be a necromancer, summon undead and such things, u can play different classes of necromancer, and will be many more classes in the future, u can upgrade your power, minions, and equip a trinket. This game is hard to clear but easy to master, every level has its own way to clear, so you need to try again the same levels because this game is so diffficult, the enemy is so strong, so dont just rely on your minions to attcak, the key here is your brain and tactic. once you master it you will be a so happy that you want to laugh at the good people corpses. So well what are you waiting for hurry up and buy.

Frost King

553 products in account

3.4 hrs on record

Posted: 25 July

There honestly needs to be more games like Nekro, the 'You are a Villian' genre is so lacking. It's one of the few itches that has never truely been scratched properly in my opinion.

With that out of the way, this game is still in early access, still being developed, and I admire what the developers have done thus far.

Basicly you are Necromancer to some degree, after excacution you switched dietys after yours stopped answering your prayers. You are able to summon 'hordes' of monsters to aid you in your quest to destroy the kingdom leaving a blood soaked path of destruction in your wake.

Every Nekro is unique, has it's own playstyle, and you will find one that fits how you enjoy playing the game. There are more Nekro's on the way, and there have been talk of DLC nekro's aswell.

Now here comes the negative, and I am afraid it is alot. However keep in mind, I do like the game, I honestly do, every game has flaws, and this one is STILL in Development. I acknowlage that, but since it is in development some things can change, and I hope that they do.

First off, the hordes are way to small. All Nekro's start off with the same starting spell, thats fine, then the paths branch out and you lock in one of a choice of enemys to fit your playstyle, once locked you cannot choose others. Like the first choice, bloodthirsty demonic bats which you can max out at 5, or two plant like turrents that can't move. Not much choice nor options. You really can't command a massive horde to wreak havoc with, its always small, somewhat weak, and really most of the time you end up fighting whatever by yourself once the meat shield is gone.

Second, once you pick a Nekro, thats about the end of diversity, The spells and summons are identical, once locked in thats it, you have made a choice and cannot expeirment with it before hand, the best thing to do is save, test, reload choose again. However by diversity I want diffrent spells for diffrent Nekro's, they should be more unique that basic combat and how /they/ approch a situation. Like the starting spell, it has the same abilitys to unlock, damage, number, faster recharge, thats it. It should be unique to each nekro, and the summons should be unique aswell. I know it takes alot of programing but it would mean much more replayability and personality to the Nekros.

Third, maybe I am a bad player, but at the first boss (Which is Total Biscuit, which IS awesome), they take off the training wheels and it becomes utterly brutal, since your hordes are small, and probably not upgraded well you are overwhelmed easily and most of the gameplay consist of retreating, rebuilding then throwing the meat shield back at the problem.

Fourth, and this is totally me, I would like larger maps, with more, options on how to tackle problems, the maps are small, clastrophobic (Or the ones I have played) with a handful of methods to approch any problem, basicly do you want to go this way, or come in from over there. More options like, causing a rock slide, or creating choke points, or some how get infighting going on, or something, would make you feel like more of a villian, the walking hordes of monsters through the street is awesome but there are more ways to be evil.

But all in all, the game is still in devlopment and I still highly recomend it, it is a beautiful game, the devleopers have put alot of work in it, the developers actully care about the community and are working to make an awesome game. If you ever wanted to be the bad guy, this is a game you need to play.

Yuki no Hana

545 products in account

4.3 hrs on record

Posted: 15 August

Great game but they should modify gameplay a little.

『FR/EN/日本」ProtoXenox

73 products in account

Posted: 4 July

This is a really good game, pretty gore, so much blood, so much zombies and summonables creatures, good graphisms, good sounds, just like I want games :)

King Of Demons

206 products in account

Posted: 8 July

This is a fun game that I would like to see go further

ImmenseFoxTheOtaku

68 products in account

0.4 hrs on record

Posted: 22 July

Outstanding! for an Indie game thats Early Acess. Very glad that i bought this and it was well worth it. I always liked the idea of being the villain in games and this game lets me do just that. Going into towns, killing farmers and stealing their blood :D.

Only thing that needs improving as it is, is the Combat in this game. As it gets repetetive as your killing farmers, with either scourge or meele or what ever you use. Aside from that, this game is definately worth buying and you wont regret ever purchasing the game. Also the GFX for this game is so dark and simply remarkable!. it looks so magnificent.

One more good thing, is that the game is EARLY ACCESS, EARLY ACCESS I SAY! so its not even the final product. This game is going to end up being the best indie game i ever played if they continue to keep improving this game.

Razr Nation

190 products in account

2.6 hrs on record

Posted: 8 August

There are many different things that come to mind the first time you stumble upon a game like this, yet you still probably end up impressed the first time you play it. DarkForge’s Nekro is the best example of how Steam Early Access should be.

Slinks

280 products in account

3.2 hrs on record

Posted: 27 September

If mixing Overlord and Diablo sounds like a good idea to you, you'd probably like this game. I know I sure as hell do. Eat farmers, set traps, and summon all sorts of hideous demon-spawn to throw at people while you waltz through knee-deep corpse matter and blood throwing bombs.