The Unliving Review Summary

Engaging Art & Fun Gameplay: Reviewers consistently praise the game's beautiful and detailed pixel art style, finding it visually captivating. The gameplay is described as fun, addictive, easy to pick up, and offers a refreshing and unique experience.

Authentic Necromancer Horde Control: The game excels at delivering the fantasy of being a powerful necromancer, allowing players to raise and control massive hordes of undead. This core mechanic provides a unique sense of power and is central to the gameplay experience, with specific praise for horde management and minion control.

Rich Lore & Solid Writing: The game features a well-written world with intriguing lore, compelling characters, and engaging dialogue. Reviewers appreciate the attention to detail in the story building, which provides a solid foundation and adds significant interest to the game.

Strong Potential & Concept: The game is recognized for its fantastic and promising core idea, with reviewers noting its significant potential to become an excellent and endlessly playable title. A lot of effort and love from the developers is evident in its current state.

Stable Performance & Value: The game is noted for having few bugs and functioning well, with AI that responds to player commands. Reviewers consider it a solid product for its price, indicating good value and a generally smooth experience.

Major Bugs & Poor AI: The game is plagued with numerous bugs, including performance issues and glitches. Both enemy and friendly AI, especially for the undead minions and horde, are consistently criticized as being terrible, getting stuck, not attacking, or not following commands, making combat frustrating and often unplayable. Controls for the necromancer and horde are also described as clunky and imprecise.

Weak Progression & Skills: The game's progression system, including skill trees and upgrades, is widely criticized for being unrewarding and often counterproductive. Players report not feeling stronger despite unlocks, with many skills and spells being useless, conditional, or even making the game harder by polluting the random skill pool.

Unfinished, Repetitive Gameplay: Many players feel the game is unfinished, unpolished, and lacks sufficient content, making it feel like an incomplete product. The core gameplay loop quickly becomes boring and repetitive, with the roguelike elements failing to provide meaningful variety or replayability, leading to a tedious grind.

Fragile Necromancer Character: The main character, the Necromancer, is consistently described as being very fragile and weak, especially in early game. Their basic attacks are slow, low-damage, and often put them at risk, making solo combat difficult and unrewarding.

Poor Tutorials & Guidance: The game is perceived as overly complicated with a steep learning curve, yet it provides insufficient tutorials and in-game guidance. This leaves players confused about basic mechanics, resources, and the overall gameplay logic, hindering their ability to engage effectively.

Roguelite death-progression loop: The game features a core roguelite loop where players die, accumulate currency, and use it to upgrade their character and army for future runs, making progression easier. Each run involves procedural maps and random upgrades.

Intuitive horde control: The game provides intuitive controls for the undead horde, primarily using the right mouse button for movement, guarding, and targeting. Ctrl allows minions to gather around the player.

Necromancer undead army: Players embody a necromancer, raising and controlling diverse undead minions, each with unique skills. The main combat revolves around managing and utilizing this resurrected army.

Skills consume life/minions: Activating skills and spells consumes the Necromancer's lifeforce (mana) and often requires sacrificing existing undead minions, adding a strategic layer to resource management.

Undead sacrifice effects: Sacrificing different types of undead minions triggers unique "death rattle" effects, such as an archer firing a powerful last arrow or a basic fighter exploding for damage, adding tactical depth.

Frequent performance & crashes: Players report significant performance issues, including frequent frame rate drops, stuttering, and long loading times. The game also experiences crashes and freezes, particularly on Steam Deck, impacting the overall experience.

Solid PC optimization: Many players experience stable and well-optimized performance on various PC configurations, including low-end notebooks and systems with GTX 1080. The game runs without significant lag, freezes, or bugs on healthy Windows 10 PCs.

Missing screen shake toggle: Players desire an option to disable screen shake, indicating its presence can be disruptive or cause discomfort. Adding this accessibility feature would improve the player experience.

Buy on Sale Recommended: Many reviewers suggest the game is a worthwhile purchase, but primarily when it's offered at a discounted price. They feel its current value aligns better with a sale price rather than full retail.

Not Recommended Currently: A significant number of reviewers advise against purchasing the game in its current state, citing various issues like poor balance, lack of updates, or general unworthiness at full price. They often suggest waiting for improvements.

Generally Worthwhile Experience: Despite acknowledging existing flaws, a significant portion of reviewers found the game to be a generally enjoyable and worthwhile experience. They expressed satisfaction with their purchase, an intent to continue playing, and some even stated they would not seek a refund.

High Potential, Needs Fixes: Reviewers frequently express that the game possesses significant potential to be a great title, but it is currently held back by various issues that require explicit developer attention, optimization, and fixes. They hope for continued development and polish.

Undead Army Utility: A specific concern is raised regarding the utility of the undead army, with a desire for them to be more than just "meat shields." Reviewers hope for mechanics that allow for strengthening the army rather than just using them as disposable units.

Early Access Status: Reviewers frequently mention the game's Early Access status, noting that content was limited during this phase. Some players had experience with the game from its early development years.

Desire for Sequel: Players expressed a strong desire for the development team to create a second installment of the game. This indicates a positive overall impression and interest in the game's universe.

Short Game Length: Reviewers noted that the game could be completed in a very short amount of time, specifically less than three hours. This suggests a concern about the game's overall content or replayability.

Minions Core Gameplay: The game's fundamental gameplay revolves around the use and management of minions. This highlights a central mechanic that defines the player experience.

Played Early Demo: A reviewer mentioned having played an early demo of the game. This provides context about their prior experience with the game's development.