Transcend the soil or combat the rot down under! Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists is a visually enticing metroidvania with an unconventional control scheme and a self-described focus on playing things out of order—one of those special kinds of descriptions that work like an activation phrase for all the sleeper weird game enjoyer agents. Yet, when the fighting is over and the dust has settled, why do I not see a flower bloom?
Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists is likely to challenge your preconceptions the most at the very beginning. From its smaller aspect ratio to your items requiring a precise throw using a button combination, Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists is anything but standard. It would be nice, though, if there existed an option to check the button input for the latter (up + attack) if, perchance, you were forced to look away for a second while the explanation played.
The majority of the characters you meet along the way to your first temple speak in a flowery language appropriate to the game’s theme: nature vs industrialism and greed. Alruna, a freshly bloomed dryad hero of her people, fights the coarse, mechanical, uncaring and violent capitalist monstrosities in four different worlds. Among them, one fellow explorer stands out, warning her of the dangers at the end of the road.
Furthering the idea is the retro-inspired music, with its similarly rough sounds breaking through the already oppressive melodies. I found it to be a mixed bag, often being too rough on the ears to enjoy during longer stretches of more peaceful exploration, yet during the intense platforming sections it managed to accentuate the tension and create a truly striking sensation that can keep you going. More variety would do wonders here.
What follows the first few bursts of unique excitement is a much more intuitive set of obstacles. Exploration gets interesting fast thanks to a smaller world and the throwing mechanic, requiring a surface on which a seed can land and grow, as well as enough room so that it does not break the moment you chuck it into the air.
The promise of meaningful sequence-breaking, however, is likely to feel lacking on your first playthrough. The more impactful skips are hidden well enough that these knowledge checks will prove useful only on a replay. Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists incentivizes multiple playthroughs with its two mutually exclusive endings, locking your save file the moment you reach one, yet there also exist some aspects that disincentivize them.
See, there exist desirable quirks related to how you interact with the world: tricks, and ideas which meaningfully add to the learning curve and can put you on another level when mastering the game. On the other hand, there are things such as the inconsistent behavior of the base whip attack, which stops your momentum in some instances, while preserving it in others. Alruna’s head does not have a hitbox, which makes for a weird sensation during combat and certain platforming sections, and she does not get invincibility frames upon getting hit unlike her enemies, leading to plenty of frustration.
Despite its best attempts at adding meaningful friction, Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists lacks the polish required to elevate its gameplay and fails to hide its missteps. Hits do not feel particularly punchy, the seeds that you will be using constantly just sort of pop out of your neck without any sound effects, and the jumps lose momentum unnaturally fast. Everything across the board could use stronger feedback.
Few gratifying discoveries aside, playing this unconventional game feels uncharacteristically unsatisfying. Though non-linear, no matter in which direction I went, everything felt monotonous, almost automatic. The mechanical contraptions of the Necro-Industrialists pointed me forward, denying the opportunities to express myself through movement. Perhaps part of it is me finding the two simplest “open blocked path” items first, leaving the other, more expressive ones up until I already explored the majority of the world.
I cannot help but feel like the basic movement is strong enough to create more inventive challenges not just on the optional paths. It could be that the non-scrolling, smaller screens just never allowed for the more complex platforming sections to take form. There may exist a mismatch between the exciting movement and the amount of content that can fit just one node on a map.
Perhaps, then, Alruna and the Necro-Industrialistss compact nature, which is part of its appeal, is also its biggest weakness. Is the tighter map with its knowledge-based secrets and skips worth the repetitive platforming? Could more have been done to coalesce these two sides of its design? I think the game’s theme of something beautiful blooming in ground’s cracks despite the overwhelming terror says it best.
There are parts of Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists that I deeply appreciate. I would love to see its throwing mechanic grow into something greater, as if an exciting update to a childhood classic that was A Boy and his Blob. The developer clearly has the chops to design a unique map and they excel at creating a truly oppressive atmosphere without fully overwhelming the player. It is all worth experiencing should these ideas never reach the light of day again, but I hope they will instead resurface as something truly majestic.
Mateusz played Alruna And The Necro-Industrialists on PC with a review code.