Necropolis wants you dead, and it wants you to start over. That is the deal Harebrained Schemes made with players in 2016, and it is the deal that holds the game back. The studio built a living dungeon — one that rearranges itself every run — and set a mad oracle called the Brazen Head at the top of it. What arrives on PlayStation 4, PC, Mac and Xbox One is a third-person action roguelike with real atmosphere and a punishing structure that never quite earns its cruelty. The published critical aggregate sits at 6.0 out of 10 across 15 outlets. That number is fair, and this review lands in the same place.
Abraxis and the Tomb Under the World
The setup is thin, and the game knows it. An archmage named Abraxis carved out a secret underground tomb to practice magic far from civilization. The player is one of several adventurers who turn up at the Necropolis for reasons the game leaves open — loot, glory, exile. All three give way to a single need: escape.
That is the whole story, and Necropolis does not pretend otherwise. The dungeon is set in a labyrinth in an abstract dimension, which is a polite way of saying the rooms do not obey geography. Moving platforms drift through it. Treasure hides in it. Some of it you can rearrange by solving puzzles.
Abraxis does not run the place day to day. His servant, the Brazen Head, does. The Head shapes the environments and hands out tasks, and both of those things change constantly. It is the best idea in the game and the least developed one. A mad mystical intellect should feel like a presence. Here it feels like a system with a voice.
Blackguard, Brute, and One Save File
Necropolis gives you two adventurer classes as of the latest update, and the difference between them is the difference between two ways of dying.
- The Blackguard — built for speed, and the class that rewards players who want to move through a room before it finishes forming.
- The Brute — built for strength, and the class that rewards players who would rather hit a dead adventurer than outrun one.
Combat runs on timed attacks and attack patterns. It leans hard on where you stand and where you move, which is the correct instinct for a game about rooms that shift under your feet. Enemies include dead adventurers, wild animals, and abandoned machinery. That mix is stranger and better than a standard fantasy roster, and it is one of the few places where Necropolis’ myth-and-magic pitch actually pays off.
Then there is the save file.
The Dungeon Takes Everything Back
Death in Necropolis is permanent. Items go. Progress goes. You start a new save file. This is standard for a rogue-lite, and Necropolis is not wrong to use it. It is wrong about how much it takes.
The player can have only one active save file. Cosmetic items bought with in-game currency across various levels can only be applied to a character at the creation of a new save file. Read those two rules together and the problem is obvious: the game sells you things you cannot wear until you lose everything, and even then you can only wear them on a character you have not built yet.
Collectible books, called codexes, are the one system that survives the reset in spirit. They grant equipped effects you apply at the end of each level, before descending. The range is practical rather than dramatic — a higher jump, better money and item drop rates. Those are the right kinds of upgrades for a game that keeps stripping you down. They are also thin, and they arrive at the moment you least want to stop and read a menu.
Where Necropolis Holds Up
The dungeon itself is the argument for the game. A labyrinth that rearranges every run is not a new idea, but Harebrained Schemes commits to it. Rooms move. Platforms carry you places you did not plan to go. Puzzles let you alter parts of the world, which turns the environment from a set into a tool.
The third-person perspective is the right call. Combat built on movement and placement needs a camera that shows you the floor, and Necropolis gives you one. When a fight works, it works because you read a room and moved correctly, not because you mashed a button at the right time.
The tone holds too. Monsters, myth and magic, all of it lorded over by a Brazen Head that never stops talking. Necropolis is not a scary game, but it is a strange one, and strange is harder to build than scary.
What the Two Versions of the Release Did
Necropolis shipped twice, and the gap between the two says something about how the game was treated.
| Platform | Release window | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Windows, OS X | July 2016 | First release; PC and Mac players got the dungeon months early |
| PlayStation 4, Xbox One | October 2016 | Console release roughly three months later |
That is not a scandal. It is a pattern. A studio ships on PC and Mac, watches the response, and brings the game to consoles afterward. What matters is whether the extra time changed anything. Nothing in the record suggests it did. The console versions arrive with the same classes, the same codex system, and the same single save file.
The 6.0 Is Not a Mystery
A 6.0 out of 10 across 15 outlets is the score of a game with one good idea and several unfinished ones. That is exactly what Necropolis is.
The living dungeon is real. The Brazen Head is a genuinely good hook. The enemy roster — dead adventurers, wild animals, abandoned machinery — is more interesting than the genre usually bothers with. Combat that depends on movement and placement is the correct design for a world that will not hold still.
Against that: a plot that amounts to an archmage, a tomb, and a reason to leave. Two classes. One save file. Cosmetics you cannot use until you have already lost. Codex effects that top out at a higher jump and better drop rates. None of these are fatal on their own. Together they describe a game that ran out of room before it ran out of ideas.
The permanent-loss structure deserves the harshest reading. Permadeath works when each run teaches you something and leaves you something. Necropolis takes the progress and leaves the knowledge, which is the cheaper half of the bargain. The single save file turns that from a design choice into a wall. There is no experimenting with a second character. There is no keeping a build you like. There is one file, and the dungeon will eventually eat it.
Worth noting: the cosmetic restriction is the detail that should worry anyone watching this studio. It is a rule that punishes the player for spending. That is not difficulty. That is a system pointed the wrong way.
What Necropolis Gets Right Anyway
Play it for the rooms. The shifting labyrinth is the reason to spend time here, and the Brazen Head’s constant reshuffling gives the game a restlessness that most roguelikes lack. The puzzle-altered environments are the closest Necropolis comes to a real signature — you change the world, then the world changes you back.
Skip it if you need a run to mean something. The one-save-file rule and the permanent loss of items will wear you down long before the dungeon runs out of layouts.
The 6.0 holds. Necropolis is a strange, atmospheric, genuinely interesting game that never finishes the thought it started. The dungeon is alive. Almost everything inside it is not.
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