“Right Click to Necromance” Review

Introduction

I don’t fucking get it. Why this game? Almost four hundred votes on Itch, almost six hundred comments (most of them retarded or Let’s Plays, which is like saying “a car or a Bentley”), and having more spam sites and illegal uploads on DuckDuckGo than searching up “Watch [name of anime]”. What is so appealing about a game as devoid of content as Right Click to Necromance that it’s become one of the most popular games on this forsaken publishing platform? The game itself is stupidly simple — move an amorphous mass to an area and have them eat masses small than you — and doesn’t lend itself to any sort of replayability, lasting appeal, or general interest beyond being just another time waster when you have absolutely nothing. Wait, haven’t I heard of that concept before? HOLY SHIT THIS GAME PLAGIARISED AGAR.IO.

I think I understand the appeal now, like the appeal of that silly cookie clicker game, which I believe is called “Cookie Clicker”. This isn’t an audience that cares about the limited amount of time they have on this planet, doesn’t care about the possibility for playing something more worthwhile, and doesn’t care about the extraordinarily simplistic and ultimately futile nature of the thing they’re playing. In other words, the perfect game for ten – year – old boys! Suitable, too, given how Markiplier of all people gave this game a play. Also, can anybody explain to me what’s so appealing about seeing an overexcited grown man in a funny hairstyle yell at mundane pieces of art in an increasingly cartoonish public performance that manages to be both funny, tragic, and ultimately mind – bogglingly juvenile all at once? I mean, outside of the clown arts.

I don’t blame the developer for finding so much unwarranted and undeserved popularity in this title, given how they made this in forty – eight hours at gunpoint for some dumbass contest nobody cares about and has been long forgotten, the same as I don’t blame Let’s Players for being creatively dead cultural parasites who contribute nothing to the world beyond providing an easy avenue for millions of impressionable teens who have nothing in their lives except spending their days in front of a smartphone screen instead of earning good health and fitness like they need the most. They’re simply abusing a capitalist system in order to profit off the lower classes for the benefit of the minority group who does nothing good with the dirty money they earned. But it is unfortunate I found this game and had some level of fun with it, so now that means I have to review it. I GUESS.

Click Right to Neck Out

In this game you right click to necromance.

Well, that was easy.

In reality, the crux of the game involves using a small army to kill other small armies, and then take their corpses to get a bigger army. The challenge, in which this need not be a challenge in a better – designed game, involves avoiding armies more powerful than yours as you try to scoop up the small groups in order to get easy victories. It makes for a good gameplay mechanic in that avoiding opposing armies is a builder of tension, but it falls flat when you realise the movement of armies is almost totally random. Sometimes the weaker guys run away from you — which is always a buzzkill, because chasing enemies that you can’t catch up to is in no way fun — and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the more powerful guys walk directly towards you while you’re in a skirmish, meaning you lose the game when you would otherwise be in a position to wipe the floors. Sometimes you don’t get any armies that are the right size, and so you’re wandering around a map waiting for an appropriate challenge to come along. It’s a flawed, frustrating implementation of AI, and its lack of polish is obvious.

The AI within the groups, too, is flawed, not showing much intelligence whatsoever. The warriors closest to the middle will attack anything nearby, while the warriors at the farthest edges of your army will not attack enemies that are standing right next to them, which is also frustrating and ruins the advantage on getting the jump on a lone straggling enemy, losing them because they slip away from your own incompetent troops. When it comes to the fighting, your troops have no concept of strategy or tactics, simply attacking whatever is closest to them. This results in the most powerful enemies being able to do massive damage to your own army without taking damage, while your own powerful troops never get out of the way before they end up massacred. While it’s true a lot of the troops are worst than useless — especially those golems which scatter away enemies in chaotic hoards  – , they are also necessary for victory, and to have them die unnecessarily is a bit of a pisser.

There is no endgame, as far as I can tell, as even when you capture the biggest and toughest enemy in the game, there’s no victory screen or fanfare. The game just keeps on going, and you never exhaust the enemy troops: they come at you no matter how powerful your army. What’s fascinating is just how terrible the raid boss is for your own army. Its attack speed is abysmal, it deals too low damage for its status as a boss, and is only good as a damage sponge until it eventually dies at the worst time because of its inability to heal — just like all your other troops. The core gameplay is an acceptable time waster, but get any deeper than that and you’ll just be upset with a lot of the design decisions. I don’t know if equal parts time was spent on the graphics and the gameplay, but it definitely feels both of which fall a little short. Sometimes they even sabotage each other. For instance, I could barely tell the enemies and friendlies apart because of how little contrast their uniforms had. It takes a special type of failure to not even distinguish two different uniforms. Just make one black and the other white! It’s not that hard!

Conclusion

So it’s another simple game, astonishingly not a browser game, that got inexplicably popular, didn’t really do anything spectacular, and ended up as more of a novelty for people with nothing better to do in their lives. Nothing of value was gained, nothing of value was lost, and this game just sort of exists on Itch, home to a bunch of unwarranted comments from sycophants and products of incest. Such brilliant discourse includes: “k”, “n”, “good”, “a comment”, “so fun!”, “Game si good”, “SHIT”, “i dont know ho to open the game”, “haw do you play”, “how do i play tish game”, “how do you play the game aster you download it??”, “how do you get in to the game”, “how do u get the game without paying?”, “how do you make it work on chromebook”, “jak”, “kewl”, “reeeeee”, “I runied the video under me!”, “add me on skype [REDACTED] ill help for ideas”, and “Dennara packers and movers in Ahmedabad, best and affordable to hire a company for safe household shifting locally or within cities and international shifting as well. Contact us! [spam domain]”. No, I’m not attributing these mouth breathers, fuck off.

And you know, with all these comments coming in and writing the review for me, I think I can only summarise my thoughts with the following prose, but more like poetry in its lucid construction, about how well I thought of this game, and also how well I didn’t:

“The developers had luck that some popular youtubers played the game,like Markiplier.It`s got potential,but after you play for like 15 minutes you get an army that kills ANYTHING in it`s way,like i did after my third try.I really see potential in this,maybe add levels where you need to get a sume of the units that are shown in the objective or make the map bigger and add additional quest that if you complete give you acces to some new units or give units that you have acces to but in a big mass.You could add more bosses,like the GIant Golem,there could be Master Necromancer,Master Swordman,Barrel Thrower(barrels explode) oooor Experienced archer,if archers would be added to the game.So,in this comment I said my opinion about the game and added a few extras for inspiration.”

Amen, “TheDarkAngell2”. Amen.