Turn-based games are not my forte—I’m far too impatient to plot out my next three moves ahead of time—but I’m always tempted to try them out, especially when there’s the promise of a retro 32-bit horror game.
House of Necrosis is just that, a turn-based horror game reminiscent of the old-school ones I grew up on. Plus, I can’t help but compare this creepy old house to Resident Evil’s Spencer Mansion, but there’s no Albert to be found. Instead, there’s plenty of huge monsters, zombies, and evil crows, yes, you heard me, there’s a murderous murder of crows.
You have to plot your path through this isolated, creepy mansion, collect items like herbs to heal you, bullets, and melee weapons to ensure that you’ll get through the changing map with everything intact. You do play as a special forces agent investigating a string of murders in an isolated forest, though, so I think your character knew what she was getting herself into.
I, on the other hand, didn’t, or at least I didn’t think I’d encounter a huge monster with a claw for its hand so soon after I just got to grips with outsmarting a murder of crows. I thought that the top-down view, which largely lets you see everything coming your way, would take the teeth off this thing a little, but the fights are surprisingly scary. You’re also armed with a gun, a good deal of ammo, and a knife, which means you can get straight into fights without getting beaten up too badly.
The difficulty, like with most turn-based games, is placing yourself in just the right place to ensure you can attack without leaving yourself undefended from all the enemies. On my first run, I made the mistake of completely panicking as soon as I saw a herd of enemies and backing myself into a corner, surrounded by four monsters, they all jabbed me to death, and all I could do was poke them with my knife and eat handfuls of herbs, to no avail.
I soon realised that the trick is to just take things slowly and try to break combat up so you’re never fighting more than 2 enemies in one go. Oh, and I also never walked into a corner again, but that was mostly out of fear rather than strategy.
But this wasn’t just a learning experience—it was also a fantastic way to get scared. So many horror games usually resort to jumpscares to frighten players, but the creeping dread of knowing that the only thing between my character and death was my ability to plan ahead of time was truly terrifying—a great feeling to relish in while playing horror games.
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