Necrosmith 2 is the sequel to the 2022 game developed by Alawar. It is a necromancer simulator that plays as a tower defense roguelike with RTS elements. Raise the dead and defend your tower from an onslaught of enemies. Unlock different power-ups to buff your tower and minions as you uncover different artifacts and bases. While it’s not the most engaging game I’ve ever played, it has a lot of depth and combinations to unlock and experiment with as you progress throughout the game.
Bring Out Your Dead
As a necromancer, you collect different body parts to create lifeforms that help defend your tower from waves of enemies. You can create skeletons, orcs, zombies, or even mantis creatures. The fun part is mixing and matching parts to create silly hybrids. Each lifeform can be assigned to do different tasks. You can have them gather resources, defend your tower, and attack enemies or enemy bases. You play in 15-minute increments before a giant enemy appears. Luckily, you can also build giant minions out of the smaller parts that you’ve collected. There are three maps to play on. The deeper you go in a map, the harder the enemies get, but you also get more combinations to play around with.
The game plays like a real-time strategy game. Your tower spawns on a map, and as you uncover the fog of war, more bases, libraries, and resources become available. As you explore, you unlock upgrades for your tower, which range from getting more body parts to more minion damage and health regeneration. You can also unlock artifacts that give permanent buffs during your runs. You earn money, which can be spent in your hub world to unlock spells and help you during the runs.
Monster Mash-Up
When you start a run, you have limited resources. Sending your minions to collect resources and destroy buildings gives you more parts to build up your armies. Waves of enemies start to pile in, and it’s up to you to micromanage how your minions should act. Attack enemies, defend your tower, or continue to collect resources. Buying the cat spell in the overworld helps with resource gathering. You build units that take full advantage of your tower buffs as you gather more tower upgrades. I always enjoyed going physical weapon minions when I could. The best build is not always straightforward, so experimenting with different tower upgrades and minions is key to success.
The most interesting part of the game is the minion building itself. You start with skeleton parts, but you will gather different races as you progress throughout your run. The races get progressively sillier. Lizards with laser guns, swamp people, and faeries, which you can mix and match with your skeleton and zombie parts to create hilarious combinations. Creating the right combination unlocks secret recipes, which give that minion more stats than the average monstrosity you create. While creating fun combinations is a good time, the completionists might get frustrated with being a part or two short of unlocking the next secret recipe. The giant minions are especially powerful units that I like to have around. They drain your resources significantly, but I always enjoyed seeing a giant minion roam around the map destroying bases.
Dead Man’s Party
Necrosmith 2 combines roguelike and tower defense elements to deliver a fun necromancer simulator. The game involves micromanagement of your resources, minions, and enemies. It is a nice RTS spin on the roguelike genre that is starting to feel crowded. However, there are drawbacks, such as some stagnant moments in the run where you are waiting for more resources or enemies to appear. Building different body combos to create the best minions to fight off enemies is fun, but it can be annoying when you’re close to having a good minion but are one part off. Despite that, finding a new secret recipe or tower upgrade made up for the waiting games I had to do. For those looking for a fun tower defense game or a roguelike, especially one that is good for Steam Deck, Necrosmith 2 is up your alley.
