Delve a hopeless dungeon and die of despair in indie action RPG Into the Necrovale

An upcoming action RPG sends a condemned criminal into the depths of a forsaken land in order to get loot and save and/or destroy the world. Into the Necrovale is listed as Coming Soon on Steam, but it has a pretty healthy demo that you can try immediately.

Into the Necrovale builds on the kind of room-based, procedural dungeon delving you've seen in games like Hades, but has the more hopeless, grim air of a FromSoftware fantasy game. In fact, Hope is literally a game mechanic: The longer a delve into a dungeon goes the more you lose. If you die with all your hope, you lose an item permanently.

And those items are pretty much the game! Combining different weapons, armor, rings, and the like is how you build your character up. I found an early ring that ignited enemies hit by my attacks, making a low-damage fast-firing bow I found very powerful indeed.

Permanent progression aside from items comes via permanent hope stones, which can be earned by winning dungeon delves. You spend those on upgrades and on rekindling the passions of your fellow prisoners. An early one lets you light a fire in the hub area, giving a bit of extra hope before each delve. Another unlocks a merchant, and so on.

You can find Into the Necrovale on Steam, along with its demo. It's listed as "coming soon."

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
A look at four heroes in SHape of Dreams, a new action roguelike by Lizard Smoothie.
Shape of Dreams' demo shows off an ingenious roguelike that wields Risk of Rain-tier finesse with action MOBA chaos, and I think I might be in love
The protagonist of Haste dashes with alacrity in a vivid piece of artwork for Haste: Broken Worlds.
Haste: Broken Worlds finally lets me live out my childhood fantasy of running really fast and then slamming into a rock at Mach 1 and breaking all my bones
Knight with broken sword flanked by goblin and angel in strange underground environment.
D&D-skewering, Disco Elysium-inspired RPG Esoteric Ebb had me trying my best to be a cleric while my Intelligence stat kept telling me to become a wizard-king
A spellcaster and muscular barbarian face down against an army of skeletons.
This 'overwhelmingly positive' Steam Next Fest autobattler demo feels like someone bolted a Path of Exile-style map onto Halls of Torment, and I fear for my future productivity
A cartoon nun looks shocked and scared, bathed in green light.
The new game from the Blasphemous devs is like if Commandos was a metroidvania set in a Spanish monastery, and also the Green Beret kept losing his mind
A sorceress with smoke covering her face in Sultan's Game.
This depraved roguelike will turn you into a desperate sociopath… uh, in a fun way
Latest in Roguelike
A convoy of strange beings proceed across a desert in Caves of Qud key art.
After 17 years, devs of the only roguelike where players ask 'the best way to get the most limbs' can't believe its success: 'More people have bought Caves of Qud than are in this stadium, how do you reckon with that?'
A True Kin knight stands in a ruin in Caves of Qud, flanked by bloodstained furniture and a freshly mortalized corpse.
Despite making a roguelike where you can have countless arms and legs, Caves of Qud's creators say the ideal form is a limbless sphere: 'We started in perfection and only moved farther from God'
The jester from Balatro, portrayed in unsettling detail in real life, wears an uncanny smile and stares at the viewer.
PC Gamer vindicated by Swen Vincke: Larian boss calls Balatro his personal GOTY as it sweeps top prize from devs at GDC awards
live action Jimbo the Jester from Balatro holding a playing card and addressing the camera
Balatro's first demo could be edited with Notepad to unlock the whole game—the solution? 'Bury it as soon as possible' with a 'newer, shinier version'
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
A vampire with a dark castle and swarms of bats in the background.
We need to decide on a genre name for Vampire Survivors-like games before a really terrible one sticks
Latest in News
PC Gamer magazine issue 408 Doom: The Dark Ages
PC Gamer magazine's new issue is on sale now: Doom: The Dark Ages
A gigantic terracotta sentinel made of living armor
Total War: Warhammer 3's army of Cathay has broken containment and is making its way to tabletop Warhammer at last
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'