The Unliving

I wanted to fall completely into The Unliving. The concept is almost too good to squander: a permadeath roguelite where the Necromancer himself is the fragile center of a swelling undead horde, every slain soldier a potential recruit, every failed run a step toward unlocking the next miserable upgrade. The pixel art delivers dark, handcrafted atmosphere that genuinely earns its grimness, and the hub-world storytelling, which slowly pieces together the Necromancer's fractured memory through cult members, captured enemies, and even dialogue with his own phylacterium, channels something of the Legacy of Kain's sardonic tone. On paper this is exactly the kind of small-studio ambition I want to champion. In practice the gap between concept and execution is uncomfortable to look at. The Necromancer himself is extremely fragile by design, and the idea is that your horde compensates. But the horde AI has a habit of acting on its own agenda: archers drifting to the front line, skeletons path-finding into walls, undead priests standing idle while their master eats arrows. You control the army with left-click attacks and a right-click rally command, supplemented by spells that draw from multiple resource types, lifeforce, bones, blood, and echoes, all of which drop from enemies but cannot be stored. Managing four simultaneous currencies while your troops wander is a stressful combination, and the game's tutorial barely acknowledges any of it. Early runs feel particularly punishing before the lair upgrade system starts opening meaningful options, and that opening stretch is long enough to test genuine patience. What holds attention despite all of that is the visual and audio craft. The pixel art has weight and personality: siege scenarios where giant undead creatures assault fortified walls look spectacular in motion, the dark colour palette is consistent and atmospheric, and reviewers consistently praised the soundtrack for matching the oppressive mood without becoming numbing. The procedurally assembled levels are built from hand-drawn chunks rather than pure random noise, which keeps things legible run to run. Randomized artifacts change the Necromancer's attacks and unlock special abilities each run, and sacrificing undead troops to fire off high-damage spells adds a tactical wrinkle that actually rewards attentiveness rather than pure horde-spamming. The idea is real: you are fighting alongside your army, not behind it. The honest tension here is between a game that has clearly been refined through a long Early Access period and a community that still flags patchy AI, inconsistent reward drops, and a lack of post-1.0 communication from the developer. Steam's aggregate sits at mixed, around 62 percent positive across several hundred reviews. That number is not a dismissal, it is a signal: players who click with the macro-management loop and accept the AI ceiling find genuine replayability, players who need a responsive, readable roguelite find a slog. If you have any love for isometric necromancer fantasy, slow-burn atmospheric pixel work, and the satisfaction of occasionally commanding an eighty-strong undead tide across a besieged town, there is something real here. If you need the horde to actually listen, temper expectations considerably.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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