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Necrotic Drift is a fun graphical "survival horror text adventure" that plays
like a modern cross between From Dusk Till Dawn and Underworld movies. Like Sherwin's
previous game Fallacy of Dawn, the game is set in New Haz, a fictional-yet-familiar
city in modern day New Jersey. You play Jarret Duffy, a 20-something geek who works
at Benji's Gaming and Role-Gaming Emporium as assistant manager. The game begins on
an ordinary night, with you and your roommates trying to decide which DVDs to rent
for the evening. Not soon after, all hell breaks loose with various undeads that look
like they come out of the latest AD&D rulebook. Like Fallacy of Dawn but even more
successfully, Necrotic Drift is oozing to the brim with atmosphere. Well-written
dialogues and descriptions let you know Jarret, his friends, and his world inside
out like few other text adventures could. Most game fans will have a blast playing
this game just to spot the numerous references to tabletop RPGs, computer games, and
comics. What makes the game even more fun is the fact that the zombies, lichs, and
other undeads in this game actually CAN be defeated by means described in TSR's D&D
rules! While the clues are sufficient, die-hard pen & paper RPG fans will know almost
instinctively what they need to defeat the monsters. Most puzzles are basic and
simple - you just need to whack the monsters with the right weapon in the first few
stages of the game to kill them. These puzzles are made even simpler by the game's
extreme linearity: most times you have only one objective to focus on (usually of the
"defeat this wandering undead" nature) and few areas to explore. On the other hand,
easy puzzles mean you will not get stuck so often, which means the plot will unfold
much faster - making the game an even better approximation of survival horror movies
in which events happen in the space of few seconds. The last few puzzles in the game
are more intricate and complex, but text adventure experts will have no problem
overall with the game. The game makes good use of graphics and sounds. Every location,
monster, and NPC is depicted in photorealistic pictures, and some sounds really make
you jump out of your seat (it's almost as scary as The Lurking Horror). In March/2013, an updated “Deluxe” version was released as part of the pay-what-you-want Cerebral Bundle. |
