Developer: Mads Skovgaard
Platforms: Mac, PC (Reviewed)
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Strategy
Publisher: Hooded Horse
Necesse is a top-down open-world survival craft game in a procedurally generated world the game is in early access on Steam. This game was developed by Mads Skovgaard and published by Hooded Horse. There are many games similar to Necesse, such as Core Keeper, Super Fantasy Kingdom, etc. This review was done for the PC, but the game is also available for Linux and macOS systems.
Necesse is a sandbox action-adventure exploration game. The game takes place in a world full of mysteries for you to explore. In Necesse, you have the opportunity to grow your settlement and lead adventures to defeat the pirate kings. The game can be played both singly or with up to as many friends as possible. In Necesse, you explore through dungeons, fight bosses/enemies, explore various lands, and level up your character and settlement through mining, fighting and crafting. The game also comes with five different game modes when starting your world: classic, hard, brutal, adventure and casual. The various game modes allow players to replay the game and test to see differences.
The controls for Necesse are fairly simple to get used to. The game starts off with a min-tutorial that allows for the player to familiarise with various mechanics and keys. While using the keyboard and mouse, there was no noticeable delay, and the controls worked smoothly. Plus, there are not many controls that the player needs to get used to, which is also really good.
The art style of Necesse is very basic, and to some, it may not be appealing to look at. It has a similar resemblance to many pixelated/solid-like bullet hell games. Just because the art style is basic, it does not necessarily mean that the game is ugly. The game has its charm with unique mobs, NPC and objects you encounter. The game has a cartoonish look to it with very bright, solid colours. One thing I do not personally like about how the game looks is the tiny UI. Everything seems so small, and I wish there was an option to make the UI slightly bigger. The hotbar, inventory and such are a bit too tiny, and in some cases, you have to get up close to the screen to look at things. Alongside the visuals of the game, there is also the soundtrack, which I find to be complementary and makes the game more immersive to play. The soundtrack includes fun instrumental music and wonky sound effects, which add to the art style. I find the boss encounters to have the best soundtrack, which gets the player more into the game. Overall, the soundtrack and visuals are quite basic, but they work well with the endless amount of mechanics and encounters in this game.
What I like is that this game has a similarity to Terraria, where it is not entirely focused on survival in the sense of food and hunger but rather the aspect of levelling up and fighting enemies. The game does have progression to it where you can fight multiple bosses in order to reach the end game boss. I like this especially because it allows for players to be able to head in a specific direction and not open-endedly play the game. The game progression is through quests that you are given by the NPC who lives by your house; he allows you to progress onwards into the game by asking you to kill certain mobs, collect certain items, or kill a region-specific boss. What I like about the game is that you start off with a relatively big inventory, and the game comes with so many items to offer. My favourite part about the game is trying to create armour set builds in order to take on the boss fights. The boss fights in Necesse are quite balanced, and I find that the game would be so much better to play with friends. Something I found very different about this game was that in order to build your settlement, you are able to go to neighbouring islands to hire various NPCs. There are many other features this game offers that are quite unique compared to other exploration games. This game definitely has a lot to offer.
I would say that I did enjoy Necesse. I do believe the game would be a lot more fun when playing with friends as well, but even on your own, you get into a habit of mining, building builds and completing quests. What I find really helpful about this game is that if the game ever gets too difficult, you can switch the difficulty mid-way. This keeps players from getting frustrated and feeling the need to start all over. The art style is quite bland, but when encountering the mobs, it brings the game to life. At the end of it, I did enjoy the game, and it can take up a lot of your time to play!
Necesse is a nice action-adventure exploration game that you can play by yourself or with multiple friends. You are able to complete quests, go mining, build your own settlement and fight bosses to reach the end. For the price of €9.99, the game has many elements to offer and brings its own unique touch to top-down sandbox games. Definitely check out Necesse!
Overall: 6.5/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
