Rising Blur Live Stream
Rising Blur is a friendly streamer who specialises in necromancer games. So who better to play our demo?
The Necromancer's Tale News
The Necromancer's Tale is a dark gothic Disco Elysium, and it's got a new demo
While I love the high fantasy feel of games like Fable or World of Warcraft, there's nothing quite like the allure of a world plunged into darkness, depravity, and chaos. The hopelessness of Diablo's Sanctuary, the grit and grime of Dragon Age Origins' Deep Roads and Korcari Wilds - for every sparkle, I demand an equal amount of blood splatters. The Necromancer's Tale - as the name might suggest - has gore in droves, accompanied by a Disco Elysium-style investigation system and turn-based combat akin to Baldur's Gate 3. If there's ever a game that screamed 'Lauren,' it's this one.
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Build Your Party (and Raise Them Right)
A Necromancer Origin Story
In The Necromancer’s Tale, you play as a minor noble in the 1700s, initially carefree and privileged, but gradually dragged into black magic and necromancy. It’s a necromancer origin story structured around an arcane spellbook that comes into your possession.
The acquisition, deciphering, and implementation of rituals and spells is a big focus in the game: the process itself and the effect it has on your sanity is central to the plot.
As the game progresses, revelations about the past and the politics of the present provide the motivation to draw you forwards through the spellbook. By about one-third of the way through, you will be raising your first skeletons, then using them as protection as you delve into caves, catacombs and forests to find the ritual items you need.
The ritual which awakens zombies is a big break-through by the mid-game. As well as equipping them, you’ll find yourself acquiring rituals of repair to keep your undead party in fighting shape. You need to build a mini-army of 10-15 minions to get you through the mid-game combats, and you’ll need to keep them hidden from the townsfolk who (largely) suspect little, so far....
The open-world offers lots of side content, some of which will allow you to acquire battle magic spells separate from the rituals of your spellbook, and to summon and enslave some daemons and a wraith.You may also get involved in the chemical-reanimation of a patchwork body, and add a more sentient party member.
Combat-Mode and Story-Mode
Although building your “party” is central to the game, it is more narrative-driven than combat-driven overall (400k words of narrative/lore, and 180+ unique NPCs). You can play in “Story Mode” if you wish, which allows you to skip the turn-based combats themselves and have them auto-resolved based on the calculated combat-rating of the two opposing forces.
In The Necromancer’s Tale, you play as a minor noble in the 1700s, initially carefree and privileged, but gradually dragged into black magic and necromancy. It’s a necromancer origin story structured around an arcane spellbook that comes into your possession.
The acquisition, deciphering, and implementation of rituals and spells is a big focus in the game: the process itself and the effect it has on your sanity is central to the plot.
As the game progresses, revelations about the past and the politics of the present provide the motivation to draw you forwards through the spellbook. By about one-third of the way through, you will be raising your first skeletons, then using them as protection as you delve into caves, catacombs and forests to find the ritual items you need.
The ritual which awakens zombies is a big break-through by the mid-game. As well as equipping them, you’ll find yourself acquiring rituals of repair to keep your undead party in fighting shape. You need to build a mini-army of 10-15 minions to get you through the mid-game combats, and you’ll need to keep them hidden from the townsfolk who (largely) suspect little, so far....
The open-world offers lots of side content, some of which will allow you to acquire battle magic spells separate from the rituals of your spellbook, and to summon and enslave some daemons and a wraith.You may also get involved in the chemical-reanimation of a patchwork body, and add a more sentient party member.
Combat-Mode and Story-Mode
Although building your “party” is central to the game, it is more narrative-driven than combat-driven overall (400k words of narrative/lore, and 180+ unique NPCs). You can play in “Story Mode” if you wish, which allows you to skip the turn-based combats themselves and have them auto-resolved based on the calculated combat-rating of the two opposing forces.
London Games Festival 2025 Official Selection
The Necromancer's Tale has been picked as part of the London Games Festival 2025 Official Selection, April 3rd & 4th 2025.
We'll be there demoing it-- and would love to meet you! :-)
We'll be there demoing it-- and would love to meet you! :-)
Steam Deck Compatibility
The Necromancer’s Tale runs great on the Steam Deck, and we’ve been doing a lot of our current playtesting on it.
Graphics
The game runs at 60fps on full graphics settings on the native Deck resolution. Text size is configurable.
Controls
The schematic below shows the game controls for the Steam Deck. You can play the game entirely using the two joysticks and buttons.
The joysticks move your character and virtual mouse pointer. During normal play the D-Pad is used for cycling through nearby hotspots (and you can use A to interact with one and automatically walk up to it). During conversation, the D-Pad cycles through your chat choices. The triggers and bumpers do a variety of camera controls and other in-game things that you would normally do with the mouse buttons/wheel.
Virtual Mouse
The right stick controls the mouse pointer, and settings include top-speed and acceleration. We have found this to be a very good replacement for mouse/touchscreen. In general, ‘A’ is equivalent to clicking the left mouse button, and ‘B’ is equivalent to pressing Escape.
The virtual mouse is used, and works very well, during inventory management and combat, which are the most complex parts of the game in terms of mouse control.
Keyboard
An onscreen keyboard appears when you need to enter text (which is rare- it’s generally just at the start when naming your character, or when renaming a save file). You can use the virtual mouse (or of course the touchscreen) to type.
Steam Cloud
The game saves to Steam Cloud so you can move seamlessly between Deck and PC play.
Touchscreen
The Deck's touchscreen works just fine, of course, if you wish to use it, but the game plays perfectly without it.
XBox Controller
The game runs equally well on PC using an XBox controller. Here too you can comfortably play without need for keyboard or mouse.
Graphics
The game runs at 60fps on full graphics settings on the native Deck resolution. Text size is configurable.
Controls
The schematic below shows the game controls for the Steam Deck. You can play the game entirely using the two joysticks and buttons.
The joysticks move your character and virtual mouse pointer. During normal play the D-Pad is used for cycling through nearby hotspots (and you can use A to interact with one and automatically walk up to it). During conversation, the D-Pad cycles through your chat choices. The triggers and bumpers do a variety of camera controls and other in-game things that you would normally do with the mouse buttons/wheel.
Virtual Mouse
The right stick controls the mouse pointer, and settings include top-speed and acceleration. We have found this to be a very good replacement for mouse/touchscreen. In general, ‘A’ is equivalent to clicking the left mouse button, and ‘B’ is equivalent to pressing Escape.
The virtual mouse is used, and works very well, during inventory management and combat, which are the most complex parts of the game in terms of mouse control.
Keyboard
An onscreen keyboard appears when you need to enter text (which is rare- it’s generally just at the start when naming your character, or when renaming a save file). You can use the virtual mouse (or of course the touchscreen) to type.
Steam Cloud
The game saves to Steam Cloud so you can move seamlessly between Deck and PC play.
Touchscreen
The Deck's touchscreen works just fine, of course, if you wish to use it, but the game plays perfectly without it.
XBox Controller
The game runs equally well on PC using an XBox controller. Here too you can comfortably play without need for keyboard or mouse.