Necronator: Dead Wrong combines two of my favourite genres into one fantastic-looking indie game. The gameplay primarily consists of micro RTS, but is also mixed up with some deck-building elements to separate it from the usual crowd of indie deck-builders, a genre I adore that is getting pretty crowded lately.
Raise the Dead, Drop the Mic
In an effort to stop the dead going completely to waste, Necronator: Dead Wrong gives players the ability to collect them, as cards, and summon them in RTS missions against the living, the Livmor Alliance. As you can probably guess, there’s a comedic twist to the game that bleeds through in every aspect, making it more fun than serious, though I imagine there’s a degree of strategy that must be taken into consideration.
So far it looks like there will be four different leaders for players to choose from, each one working to a particular leadership style, and therefore playstyle. These leaders seems like they offer different abilities for players to use in the field, such as healing or lightning strikes.
When it comes to the units themselves, these are basically a combination of all the kinds of undead you’ve probably come across in other games, just recreated in card form. Players will collect these as they work their way through the game’s campaign, which takes place on a wider world map with one defined path, though I’d expect there are places where it diverges.
The deck-building element of Necronator: Dead Wrong comes into play at the start of each mission. Players need to work out what units they want to control on the field of battle, which are small squares with various fortifications on. Summoning units will require their card to be played, but if a certain unit is needed and their card isn’t in the deck, then things could go south fast.
The actual RTS gameplay is aptly described as micro, because it’s very light. Players will command units to go to certain locations or attack other units, and that’s pretty much it. Undead units are described as overpowered, but if playing games has taught me anything in my life, it’s that good quite often triumphs over evil. I reckon players will have their work cut out for them here.
The game launches in Early Access on the 13th of February 2020, but you can wishlist it right now on Steam if you’d like. We’ll try to get a look at the game up on the site around the time of release, but I can already see this being a game that blossoms in early access as its community grows.