It’s rare that a developer advertises their game’s length as aggressively as Cat Nigiri has with Necrosphere Deluxe. Their information page on Nintendo’s website reads “at least 2.5 hours of tough, NO FILLER gameplay!” The no filler part is a particularly bold claim. The game length doesn’t seem like it would allow for any padding, but does Cat Nigiri’s boast ring true?

Developer: Cat Nigiri

Publisher: Unties

4 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $7.99

I reviewed two other games so far in 2019: Omega Strike and HoPiKo. If you mashed those two games together, you would get Necrosphere Deluxe. It’s a combination of a platformer and a metroidvania while also being bite-sized. You play as Terry, an assumed federal agent who has died on duty. Terry ends up in the Necrosphere, where everyone goes when they die. Normally, there isn’t anything to do in the Necrosphere; people just hang out in their own personal purgatory for eternity. Terry’s partners have other plans. They’re sending in items that might help Terry find a way back home. Terry’s Necrosphere is made up of four subsections with four portals. One of those portals will lead him back to the land of the living.

This portal will send Terry back to the start of the game and is not the ultimate exit.

The first thing that you’ll come across from the Normalsphere (the living world) are gravity bubbles. These are bubbles that you’ll bounce off when touched. They’re a replacement for a traditional jump. Necrosphere Deluxe is a platformer where the main character doesn’t jump. Terry can only move left or right by using either the joystick, the left and right bumper, or the left D-pad button and the A button. Most upward mobility is done through gravity bubbles. Other methods will be discovered later. That means once Terry goes down a shaft, he isn’t going back up.

Each room is a puzzle of how to use the gravity bubbles to reach your next destination.

This leads to the metroidvania aspect of the game. Since most passages are one way only, there needs to be a route ahead of you that also leads back. At the end of each subsection is a portal that will warp you back to the game’s beginning, but there are a number of smaller loops that go from one area of a sub-section to another.

Another staple of metroidvanias found here is that each subsection hides a new ability that will unlock new areas. The first one you find is a ballet suit that gives you the ability to leap large distances horizontally. The ballet suit is also heavily advertised by Cat Nigiri. I was hoping that this was an optional cosmetic costume as I like Terry’s suit more, but nope. It’s a vital component to Terry breaking out of the Necrosphere.

Look how dapper he is in a suit.

Terry’s plié is also a little hit-or-miss when entering the button inputs. It sometimes fails to register. The button command is to press whichever your preferred movement option is twice. It’s difficult with every option. The most consistent method is with the left D-pad and A button, but even then it would still fail leading to death. There is no reason for the leap to not have a dedicated button. The game only needs two of all the available inputs. The Joy-Cons have thirteen available inputs per Joy-Con, so there are numerous options to make one a dedicated plié.

The number of unintended deaths due to the abysmal control scheme is incredibly frustrating, but Necrosphere Deluxe mitigates this somewhat by nailing checkpointing. It is basically a tenet that if a developer is going to make a difficult platformer, then their checkpointing needs to be generous and respawning needs to be fast. Both are true with Necrosphere Deluxe. Death will only keep Terry down for about a second, and he’ll, for the most part, only be a few gravity bubbles away from where he died.

Later areas become huge vertical climbs packed with fireballs and gravity bubbles.

Revisiting Cat Nigiri’s claim of there being “at least 2.5 hours of tough, NO FILLER gameplay” I think it’s mostly true. It took me roughly four hours to beat Necrosphere Deluxe. Not all of that time was spent on new content though. All the portals take you back to the beginning of the level, but revisiting those areas with new abilities is a treat. What wasn’t a treat was when I could not find the entrance to sub-section three. I re-ran through both the preceding subsections before finding it. A map would have prevented that from ever happening.

One of the benefits of searching through previous areas while lost is that I got to enjoy that area’s music again. The soundtrack is a major highlight of Necrosphere Deluxe. Subsection two is my personal favorite due to its thumping bass line, but none of the areas have bad music. Subsection three is an incredibly atmospheric track in part from its use of spoken word. Entering the area reinforces that your main character died and the game takes place in the afterlife

Finding enough optional collectables will unlock the bonus challenge “Terry’s Dream.” The challenge is started without any of the power-ups from the main campaign or clothes.

The first 60% of the Necrosphere Deluxe is great. The light Metroidvania aspects mixed with hardcore platforming is a mixture that really works. The last 40% is when the cracks start to show. I would argue that no use of “push twice to active a movement ability” is good in any game. It is particularly atrocious here. The amount of finesse required by this genre does not pair with the chosen control scheme. The last hour and a half wiped away any fond memories of the beginning sections and had me only wishing I could rebind buttons. That is the main feeling I have after completing Necrosphere Deluxe. That choosing this controller layout was a mistake and my thumb hurts. If the bumpers were used as dash buttons, this would have been an easy recommendation. As the game is now, it’s hard to. Here’s hoping Cat Nigiri patches in the ability to make your own control schemes.

To read the two reviews referenced in this review, click here for Omega Strike and here for HoPiKo. Share your thoughts with us by joining our Discord. Nindie Nexus is an ad-free passion project – consider buying us a coffee.