Romero City Officers,
It is with a heavy heart that I must concede that I've added a feature to the game that I've always told myself that I'd never do.
First-time players are now automatically thrust into the tutorial.
Why?
I've noticed a recurring pattern in which a new player will buy the game, fail to interact with or understand some of its most important mechanics, die, refund the game, and/or leave a bad review.
Necrosis is intentionally difficult. It expects players to manage limited resources, work together, learn its mechanics, and use their skill and wits to survive. But difficulty only works as intended when players understand the tools available to them. If someone enters the game without that foundation, intended difficulty can instead feel confusing or unfair.
I don't have millions of dollars to throw around for a marketing budget. I work a day job just like many of you do. My review score, refund rate, and personal reputation are what I have to continue growing the game.
To those of you who have put in the time to understand the mechanics, develop the skill to complete the game, and solve its puzzles: Thank you. You are part of a small and dedicated cadre of players, and I salute you. This game was made for people who miss games that expect something from them. You kick serious ass, and the completion statistics back that up.
If you want to help the project, write a review. Introduce it to your friends. Suggest it to your favorite streamer or content creator. Join the Discord to make suggestions or report bugs.
You have real agency to show the gaming industry that there is still an audience for strange, difficult, niche games, and that players don't have to settle exclusively for whatever a corporation believes will appeal to the broadest possible market.
Additionally,
The other new feature is a difficulty adjustment fallback triggered at the death screen. If you die, you will be presented with the option to continue with the difficulty adjusted automatically. This is intended to encourage players to continue without requiring them to abandon their run or return to the game-options board to select Easy mode manually.
I want to remind everyone that the game is fully completable on Easy. You can experience all of the content and unlock every level and secret character on Easy mode.
This patch also includes major localization refinements, which are still very much a work in progress, and a long-overdue cleanup of the codebase that I have to admit is more for my benefit than anyone else's.
That being said,
I am incredibly grateful for the fans of NDOD. It has been an awesome privilege to create a game for a dedicated community that corporate game studios have largely ignored for decades.
We've built something here that would be difficult to replicate inside a conventional studio because investors rarely fund projects this niche and risky.
I didn't make this game alone. We did.
-Mike
Editor’s note: I revised portions of this announcement after reflecting on its original tone. I stand by the game’s demanding design and the reasons for improving its onboarding, but some of my frustration came through more contemptuously than it should have. Players who decide that Necrosis isn’t for them don’t deserve to be personally insulted.