Never Mourn Early Access Impressions
Action RPG Never Mourn features unique necromancy battle mechanics.
Never Mourn. Credit: Primal Seed
Primal Seed’s Never Mourn is an ARPG where you must balance fighting enemies directly with supporting a small army of resurrected enemies now under your thrall. The game hit Early Access recently and I had the chance to spend some time with it.
From the developers:
Armed with a deadly double-sided scythe and a plethora of spells and abilities, take on the role of Irea, a necromancer capable of raising an army of the dead from the enemies you will slay on your journey through the underworld.
Never Mourn. Credit: Primal Seed
The game takes the form of a standard roguelite hack and slash ARPG, with the added twist of your ability to raise and command the dead. The necromancy mechanics are interesting—any creature you kill, you can draft directly into your party as long as you’re within your limit. While you fight enemies directly with close and ranged attacks, you need to decide when to switch into support role to heal your minions or raise more. Between runs, you’ll be earning skills as you level up and assigning points to your skill tree, divided between your two sets of abilities.
The game’s necromancy bears some similarity to Boneraiser Minions, an excellent auto-battler. Never Mourn differentiates itself by also having direct combat and requiring more careful management of your undead army. Unfortunately, the combat itself doesn’t feel very good because the physics make it feel too weightless.
Never Mourn. Credit: Primal Seed
Never Mourn is 3D with a fully controllable camera that can rotate around your character, an unusual choice considering the game’s format. The game’s levels are made up of rooms that are plain, flat arenas, making the different POV and camera controls feel superfluous. There isn’t a reason why the came shouldn’t have a higher, static camera angle. Isolating the player character to the lower third of the screen and hiding part of the playfield is a poor choice for this game’s design. It feels like the developer couldn’t decide whether to have the game be top down or third person over the shoulder, so they did both.
Never Mourn. Credit: Primal Seed
Visually, the game isn’t remarkable. The enemy designs are interesting but I wish they were more distinct.
Never Mourn is fairly early in its development, however, so I’d like to wait and see if the feel of the game improves before its full release. The game’s Steam page says Early Access should last a few months, but I think the game needs a little more time in the oven. I’d suggest waiting a little while before diving into this one.
Never Mourn is available now on Steam in Early Access.
Played on: Steam Deck
