Necropolis

Necropolis

The dead do not rest beneath the camp.

A dark fantasy action RPG. Pick a hero, go down the stairs, and see how deep you can get before the Necropolis keeps you.

Coming soon for Windows, and free. It may come to Steam.

The city beneath the hill

Long ago, the rulers of this valley feared death too much to bury their dead in the dirt. They dug downward instead, stacking vault under vault, binding souls to the stone so the old kings could go on advising the living.

Then came the plague they called the Red Cough. The king of the day broke the river to flush the sick from the lower tiers, and drowned his own court in the dark. A thousand years of trapped dead did not die a second time. They ran together into one dreaming thing at the bottom of the pit: the Ossuarch.

The last priests brought the city down on top of it, drove four seals through the rock to pin the nightmare in layers, and built a watch-camp on the hill. Now the seals are rotting from the bottom up, and whatever was trapped beside each one has become its keeper.

The Necropolis has begun to remember everyone who walks its halls. That includes you.

The game

A camp stands on the hill above an old city of the dead. Something below has woken, and somebody has to go down and deal with it. That would be you.

The camp in the rain: the campfire, the healer's hut and the red blood portal standing open

A camp to come home to

Trade with Morwen, have Brannoch mend your gear, buy potions from Sister Aveline, keep your finds in the stash and take the waypoint back down.

A ring of undead and their champion closing on the hero in a torchlit crypt hall, a beam of light standing over a rare find

Floors that are never the same

Every level is built fresh: rooms, cells, flooded halls and caverns, with locked doors, chests, shrines and elite packs that carry their own nasty tricks.

The graveyard south of the camp in the rain, with rows of headstones and a stone tomb

Death is a setback, not the end

Fall and you wake in the camp. Your gold waits on your corpse where you died, if you can get back to it.

Four heroes

Each has 35 skills of their own on a tree that opens as you level, and each speaks with their own voice.

The Necromancer

Necromancer

A master of death who lets others do the fighting. Raises skeletons from fallen foes, hurls bone and poison, and curses the living.

Trained in the cold colleges of the south, he thinks the Ossuarch an insult to the craft: a feral heap of wasted souls. He has not come to save the valley. He has come to claim its dead and settle who the true master of death is.

All 35 Necromancer skills · click a skill to see what it does

The Barbarian

Barbarian

A fearless warrior of the northern tribes. Wades into the thick of the fight with heavy blows, great leaps and thunderous war cries.

The old kings took northern chieftains as hostages, walled them up under the hill and kept their ancestral axe, Mountainfall. No soul reaches the sky-halls while its bones are roofed in stone. He is here to crack the vaults and let his fathers' dust see the sun.

All 35 Barbarian skills · click a skill to see what it does

The Sorceress

Sorceress

A wielder of the elements. Burns, freezes and electrocutes enemies from afar, but cannot afford to be caught.

Magic is thinning in the world above, drawn downward like water to a drain. Her Conclave sent her to find the hole. The deeper she goes the wilder her power runs, and she knows that if she leaves it will fade with every mile.

All 35 Sorceress skills · click a skill to see what it does

The Inquisitor

Inquisitor

A grim hunter of the unclean, and the only one who carries a gun. Shoots from a distance, burns the dead with holy fire and marks the guilty for judgement.

The Church says the Necropolis does not exist, because an afterlife locked in stone has no place in its teaching. He was sent alone with a writ of erasure, to finish what the last inquisitor could not. That one's pistol, Six Sins, never came back up.

All 35 Inquisitor skills · click a skill to see what it does

The descent

Four regions lie one under another, five floors each. At the bottom of every one is a seal, and the thing that keeps it.

  1. Floors 1 to 5

    The Crypt

    The Bone WardenKeeper of the First Seal

    Once the Lord Marshal of the gate. He had his flesh stripped and his bones wired in iron so he could stand watch without sleeping. He can no longer tell the dead climbing out from the living climbing down.

    “No living tread. No dead ascend. The law is bone, and the law holds.”
  2. Floors 6 to 10

    The Catacombs

    The PlaguemotherMother of the Rot

    An abbess who shut herself in the quarantine cells to nurse the dying, and took every fever into herself until she became a hive for it. She keeps the seal shut out of mercy: she thinks it is the surface air that hurts her children.

    “Hush now. Come into the warm brick. Let Mother take that awful breath away.”
  3. Floors 11 to 15

    The Flooded Crypt

    The Drowned KingLord of the Sunken Halls

    The coward who broke the river, dragged under by the court he drowned. He sits a sunken throne in the Old King's Shell, terrified of what lies in the dry caverns beneath him.

    “Drink the black water and sink! Better to drown in my court than wake the Pit below!”
  4. Floors 16 to 20

    The Bone Pits

    The OssuarchLord of the Bone Pits

    Not one man but a building made of kings, priests and ten thousand nameless dead: the memory of the Necropolis itself. It holds the last seal inside its own ribs, and breaking it is exactly what it wants you to do.

    “You carry our steel. You bleed into our stone. Come, heir of the hill: add your spine to the throne.”

And then it starts again. The fourth seal is not a lock. It is a wound in time. Break it and nothing climbs out: the Necropolis does what it was built to do. It remembers, and it rebuilds, deeper and meaner than before, and the stairs go down another twenty floors. There is no bottom. Your deepest floor is kept on record.

Loot

The reason to open one more door.

  • Mountainfall, a unique axe
  • Grim Harvest, a unique scythe
  • Six Sins, a unique pistol
  • Crown of the Pit, a unique crown
  • The Watcher's Eye, a unique amulet
  • Blood Oath, a unique ring
  • Bone Rampart, a unique shield
  • The Doctor's Beak, a unique mask
  • Hag's Hat, a unique hat
  • Vespers, a unique flail
  • Shroudcaller, a unique staff
  • The Old King's Shell, unique armour
  • Scythe
  • Pepperbox pistol
  • Plague Mask
  • Skull Crown
  • Ossuary Wall shield
  • Heartstone amulet
  • Nightstalker, a unique coat
  • Ember Rod, a unique rod
  • Harvest Moon, a unique glaive
  • Sawbones, a unique saw
  • Eternal Rest, a unique shield
  • Rootfoot, unique boots

Something for every slot

Weapons, shields, helms, armour, gloves, belts, boots, rings and amulets, from a rusty dagger to things with names.

  • 167 base types, rolled as normal, magic or rare with random bonuses
  • 100 unique items with fixed powers of their own
  • 3 sets that grow stronger the more pieces you wear
  • Gems and runes to put into sockets, and rune words for the right runes in the right order
  • Guns, but only the Inquisitor knows how to use one
  • Gear shows on your hero and wears out: keep the smith busy

Why the camp keeps you

The camp on the hill is part of the trap. The waypoint does more than carry you down: it ties you to the place. Die below and the pit breathes you back out onto Sister Aveline's cot, and keeps your gold in the dark to bring you down again.

  • Morwen the Peddler knows where her stock comes from: your own earlier descents, and the ones who came before you.
  • Brannoch the Smith hammers the same dents out of the same plate, and suspects the metal under the hill is getting to know your blood.
  • Sister Aveline mends you and prays you never try the south road, past the graveyard. She has seen what happens to those who do.

How to play

Mouse to move and fight, a handful of keys for the rest. Every key can be changed in Options.

Left clickMove, attack, pick up, talk, open
Shift + clickAttack without moving
Right clickUse the chosen skill
1 to 6Choose a skill
Q WHealing and mana potions
TPortal back to the camp
IInventory
CCharacter
KSkills
JQuests
TabMap
EscMenu: save, sound, fullscreen, controls

The stairs open soon

Necropolis is coming soon as a free game for Windows, and it may come to Steam. Your game saves as you go, so you can pick it up where you left it.

Read up on the skills