Tuesday, 2 September 2025

River City Girls, Keylocker, and Crypt of the Necrodancer

A trio of girl power games.

River City Girls

This side scrolling beat em up which plays a lot like the old Double Dragon game (complete with 2 player capability) has the best art, animation and music of this trio (despite the next two games supposedly having a "music" focus. You play as one of two female school students who set out to go on a quest to free their boyfriends. There is actually currency to collect and shops where you can spend it to upgrade skills or buy consumables. Unfortunately there is so much fighting due to the leave / return to area respawn that it gets tiring quickly. 
 
Keylocker

On a planet where music is banned, you must escape from prison for being a "musician". This is a really strange one with huge maps of its painful neon pixel art style to explore and then turn based combat with some guitar hero and timing elements - like pressing "Z" at the apex of your attack will do more damage, and perfect timing when an enemy attacks lets you evade completely. I just couldn't get into it.

Crypt of the Necrodancer

This dungeon crawler has you traversing through seizure inducing disco floors where you (and the enemies) move to the beat. Learning how the groovy bad guys "dance" is key to beating them without getting hurt and moving in time gives you some bonuses that you lose if you ignore the pulse. You also can't wait around too much as when the song ends, you drop down to the next level down where harder things await. To top it off, this is a Roguelike so expect to lose pretty much everything when you die, except for maybe the people that you can save to expand the services in your lobby. I am surprised that this turned out to be the weakest of this trio.

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