Necesse has been in development for years at Denmark’s indie studio Fair Games. At first glance, it might look inspired by Terraria or Starbound, but beneath its charming pixelated graphics, Necesse hides a deep, complex system skillfully combining building, exploration, combat and managing your own colony. It’s a procedurally generated, endless world where your task is to survive, but also build a civilization, discover the world’s mysteries and confront numerous enemies lurking in the depths.
In Necesse, you build and manage your settlement. But the game offers much more than ordinary base building, requiring you to work on creating a prosperous community. You will devote time and energy to recruiting settlers who also happen to be active workers with specialized skills. You can assign tasks such as farming, tending animals, chopping wood, mining ore and much more. Managing settlers’ happiness is crucial, because what is more efficient than satisfied workers?
Well, you must also defend your settlement against periodic attacks, building defensive structures, placing traps and hiring guards. These recall elements central to games such as RimWorld, but with a simpler, more accessible interface. The economic side, allowing you to sell your products and trade with other settlements, is excellently executed and contributes to a complex, rewarding experience.
Alongside community management, you experience numerous moments of exploration and combat. Necesse’s endless world consists of various biomes, each with unique resources, enemies and secrets. From dense forests and icy landscapes to volcanic regions and deserts, there is always something new and interesting to discover: enormous cave systems, dungeons, treasure, but also dangers just waiting to be uncovered. Combat uses a top-down perspective, with numerous opportunities to customize your fighting style at any time without being locked into one class. The challenge culminates in battles with powerful bosses, from pirate kings to dragons and fallen wizards. An intelligent difficulty-scaling system ensures bosses offer an appropriate challenge whether you play alone or with friends. The game is truly designed to accommodate your patience and abilities.
Visually, Necesse uses a nostalgic pixel-art style with clean, clear elements, making resources, enemies and environmental features easy to recognize. Although it does not aim for photorealism, the style has its own charm and contributes to a pleasant atmosphere. Sound design, meanwhile, is surprisingly detailed and contributes enormously to immersion in the world. With more than 300 new sound effects added in version 1.0, every action is clearly, recognizably represented, making the world feel alive and reactive.
A Hybrid Like No Other
Taking all these things into account, Necesse stands out for offering incredible freedom and flexibility. As mentioned, you can customize the rules in detail, such as disabling settlement attacks, changing the length of the day/night cycle or adjusting boss difficulty. Somewhere in there is also the combination of deep settlement management, action-RPG combat, endless exploration and robust crafting. Necesse takes the best elements of proven concepts and combines them into a cohesive, entertaining and endlessly enjoyable package you can savor alone or with friends.
About the Author
Martin Jovanchevski is an independent games journalist and Founder & Editor at Dev & Play Media. This updated article is an English adaptation of his original review published on itmk.
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