Even Death May Die: Necrophosis

Take a grim walk through the end of time.

‣ Necrophosis
From: Dragonis Ares, Adonis Brosteanu
Platforms: PC
Release: Coming soon
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site

Visual desolation and nihilism, served in a walking sim to take things in.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

It's jarring to hear the work of 19th-century poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in a video game. But that was the least strange part of this scene, considering a giant monstrous deity monologues it while towering over you, freshly emerging from a tomb you escaped by giving some skin guardian new eyes. 

Hearing romantic poetry in a mummified and putrid hellscape is also a big contrast. Giant statue heads and skulls adorn the background. Sculptures of ancient titans and wailing souls loom over you. At least, one assumes those are statues and sculptures. This place is so ancient it's hard to tell. And, like the poem, you are looking upon great works and feeling despair. This place is a morgue. A great-looking morgue.

I'm a big fan of cosmic horror, particularly H.P. Lovecraft's eldritch universe, an assortment of ancient evils and impossible places. It's the world-building I enjoy most, with places like the lost city of the abominable Plateau of Leng in Antarctica, as per Mountains of Madness. This thought kept coming back to me as I played the Necrophosis demo, a walking sim set in a grim and dead world rendered lavishly in Unreal Engine 5.

Walking sims get a lot of flack, but they are a rare genre that lets us indulge in a place and time. The player moves around leisurely, taking in the scenery inspired by the work of artists Zdzislaw Beksinski and HR Giger while following a story interlinked with set pieces, minor tasks, and puzzles.

Dust swirls around statues that may have once been alive and calcified corpses that were. The hills and walls are the body parts of long-dead giants. The only life comes from pathetic humanoids scattered about, usually in a trance. Ancient gods sit hunched or half-buried, too old and decayed to do anything but watch. In the distance, you can see twisted and putrefying skyscrapers. A giant tick with humanoid creatures where its eyes should be blocks your way.

At one point, I picked up a rock that turned out to be a human-faced bug that started screaming at me in anguish. Necrophosis is bleak.

Yet, it's oddly meditative. The opening sequence of the demo shows an ancient machine/creature bringing you to life by placing a brain in a decrepit body. You are disposable and lucky to exist at all, so you don't have a reason to fear death. The game doesn't need to explain this—you can feel it in the air.

Necrophosis occurs at the end of time when the eternal and ancient are rotting away. There are no avoidable threats (or apparent combat systems). Your insignificance makes you feel like a tourist, which adds the bizarre calm and gives you the bandwidth to take in the richly desolate world's grotesque beauty.

This game could not exist until recently. The visual detail that makes the desolate so immersive only started appearing ten years ago, and the ability of a tiny indie team to create such detail only conclusively arrived with Unreal Engine 5. Necrophosis' developers have a thing about exploring the despairing beauty of eldritch worlds (e.g. The Shore), and they are using UE5 to dial it up. Though you can still sense that the team’s resources are constrained, they’ve crafted a very rich world (especially for a dead one).

Necrophosis is a buffet of visual desolation and nihilism, served in a walking sim so you can take things in. Along the way, you encounter tasks, puzzles, and curious setpieces, including a cloaked void of stars reciting Lovecraft:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, 

And with strange aeons even death may die."

Maybe that's why I imagine games about nameless cities and walking through the ruins of R'lyeh. Hey, maybe someone can make an Alien-themed walking sim where you explore the derelict crashed ship, which is pretty much a mash-up of comic and body horror. 

📽 Demo Moment: Freeing Khnum from bondage

But in the meantime, I will dream of Necrophosis and the grotesque secrets it hides.

Necrophosis hasn't announced a release date yet.

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Explore The Game with Youtube Chapters:

• 📽 00:42 Resurrection

• 📽 02:25 That's an eyeball

• 📽 03:14 Barter of freedom

• 📽 04:15 Ozymandius

• 📽 06:08 A barren graveyard

• 📽 08:18 Was this once a god?

• 📽 10:30 This rock is cursed

• 📽 11:20 Erm...

• 📽 13:07 A machine?

• 📽 18:05 A crown for a king

• 📽 21:00 Move the tick

• 📽 21:43 Audience with the dead

• 📽 22:43 Freeing Khnum

• 📽 27:51 Even death may die

• 📽 29:59 Opening the gates

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