Uh oh. Metroidvanias aren’t the easiest titles to get to grips with at the best of times, but Necrosphere promises to be something else. It may not be the biggest name around, but this indie gem is looking to scratch the hardcore gaming itch that mobile gamers may have been nursing.
If by hardcore, you simply mean darn difficult, you're going to be catered to here. If you're the sort of player who has taken on some of Hollow Knight's most difficult bosses, you might well have the sort of Metroidvania chops that Necrosphere calls for. It's a fast-paced, instadeath game with a curious twist. As Touch Arcade reports, the player can only move their protagonist left or right, which means it has incredibly simple touch controls that suit its mobile home perfectly.
As you might expect, the intuitive controls bely a very challenging core. You'll frantically avoid fiendishly-placed enemies and spike traps while negotiating tricky platforming sections. If your commute to work could use something else to make it stressful and problematic, look out for Necrosphere hitting iOS on December 5, priced at $2.99. That's a lot of pain, failure, and deaths for very little money.
Lots of gamers just can't seem to make their minds up about mobile games. Some will tell you that they're all about the microtransactions, that the whole free-to-play thing is the scourge of gaming. Others will simply dismiss mobile games as casual efforts, lacking the technological wizardry to bring players a truly console/PC worthy experience (PS Vita claimed to be able to bridge that gap, and that didn't end well).
There's certainly some validity to these claims. After all, Candy Crush Saga is hardly the most hardcore gaming experience around. Despite that, it's currently much more popular than fellow smartphone titans Call of Duty: Mobile and Mario Kart Tour (in terms of active users). Necrosphere is unlikely to dethrone that title, but at least it will provide something for players that aren't sucked in by Candy Crush's allure.
Source: Touch Arcade