Introduction:
It often happens on this site that I set out to write a simple article and realize after I begin that I just have a lot to say about the subject. It happened when I explained a central theme of The Death of Ivan Ilyich; it happened when I analyzed Steven Spielberg’s movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind; and it happened in your previous Mid-week Mission post, on LUFTRAUSERS. Today I want to rectify my last review’s rambling by actually writing a simple article about a relatively new indie game, Crypt of the NecroDancer by Brace Yourself Games. Let’s see how I do.
Crypt of the NecroDancer is a 2-D top-down rhythm-based roguelike. Right off the bat, if you’re anything like me then you’re wary of a genre mash-up that seems to have most of its justification in being a quirky gimmick rather than being a well-reasoned basis for gameplay. But I’m now almost 25 hours into my experience of NecroDancer, and I’m ready to start singing its praises (preferably as a duet with the game’s vocally gifted merchant NPC).
In the Beginning was the Beat:
![[Work: The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker, 1973] The Denial of Life: A Critique of Pessimism, Pathologization, and Structuralism in Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ernest-Becker-Sketch-by-M.R.P.-Presentable-1.jpg?fit=254%2C415&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Game: Dark Souls, FromSoftware, 2011] Unchosen Undead: A Thorough Existentialist Philosophical Analysis of FromSoftware’s Original Dark Souls](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Dark-Souls-screenshot-with-Darksign.png?fit=722%2C406&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Game: Death's Door, Acid Nerve, 2021] Death's Back Door: The Pros and Cons of Acid Nerve’s Crow-centric Reaper Simulator Death’s Door](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Deaths-Door-screenshot-with-bomb-spell-in-mushroom-dungeon.png?fit=722%2C406&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)
![[Work: The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942] Smiling While Despised: The Ending of Albert Camus' The Stranger and the Beginning of Authenticity](https://i0.wp.com/thegemsbok.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Stranger-book-cover.png?fit=262%2C400&ssl=1&resize=200%2C200)