Rift of the NecroDancer News

Hi everyone! Hope you've had a blast crushing those monsters and taking photos of Heph.

We have been absolutely blown away by the response to Rift of the NecroDancer since it came out yesterday. We appreciate all the feedback we've received so far. Please keep sending stuff our way -- we read everything that comes in!

There are a few small-but-annoying bugs that we wanted to get a hotfix out for ASAP, so read below for the full list of changes and known issues.

[h2]🔁 Changes [/h2]

• Added the words 'Custom Music' to the gameplay screen when playing a custom track to help distinguish between official and custom music
  

[h2]⚒️ Fixes [/h2]

• Disabled the automatic FPS throttling when the game is unfocused
  
• This also fixes the softlock that could occur when unfocusing the game while the feedback form was open
  
• Reduced the resolution of all videos to prevent stuttering on low end PCs
  
• Prevented a softlock that would occur when entering the Calibration Test from a custom track
  
• Fixed a performance dip that occurred when triggering vibe power while 'Remove Guitar Strings' was set to Enabled
  

[h2]🪲 Known issues [/h2]
We're moving to action on these as quickly as possible, but due to the more complicated fixes we need a little bit more testing time. Thanks for your patience!

• It's possible to soft-lock boss battles when hitting extremely late in the input window right before a phase transition
  
• Boss battles sometimes do not load the correct difficulty if Play Back-to-Back is enabled
  
• Triggers and joysticks cause double inputs on all controllers (with the exception of SteamDeck)
  
• Workaround: Enable Steam Input in the Steam library properties for Rift of the NecroDancer
  
• Double inputs occur when playing using DualSense controllers (PS4 and PS5)
  
• Workaround: Enable Steam Input in the Steam library properties for Rift of the NecroDancer
  
• An animation bug occurs in Show Time! Hard difficulty that makes the game more difficult to play than intended
  
• The results screen for all boss battle Rhythm Rifts displays the incorrect song name
  
• On Repeat achievement triggers incorrectly
  
• A hidden achievement related to story completion triggers incorrectly
  
• Shielded Skeletons sometimes behave incorrectly
  
• NVIDIA graphics card settings may cause framerate issues
  
• Workaround: Edit the SaveData file (via C:\Users\your username\AppData\LocalLow\Brace Yourself Games\Rift of the NecroDancer) and set the FramerateLimit value to match your monitor's refresh rate (e.g. 60, 144, etc.)
  
• Japanese and Chinese fonts do not display punctuation correctly
  
• The tutorial does not pick up on the Invert Up/Down setting correctly
  
• New High Score banner sometimes doesn't display correctly
  
• Banshee does not enter the correct animation when stunned occasionally
  
• Turkish PCs will not display text correctly
  

Known Issues for the Level Editor will come at a later date!

Is today even real?! After 3+ years of pouring our hearts into each beat, and a DECADE after launching Crypt of the NecroDancer, we've hit the launch button!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]💸10% off until Tues Feb 11[/h2]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2073250/Rift_of_the_NecroDancer/

[h2]💸Extra 10% off if you buy it with (or already own) these titles![/h2]

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/49274/Crypt_AND_Rift_of_the_NecroDancer/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/47856/Just_Rifts__Beats/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31041/Rift_of_the_NecroDancer__OST_Volume_1/

You can also listen to the OFFICIAL Rift of the NecroDancer soundtrack on Spotify here! 🔊

[h2]🗞️What Press Think[/h2]

• "Innovates on some of the genre’s best ideas." - 8/10 IGN
• “One of the best rhythm games I’ve ever played.” - 4/5 Digital Trends
• "A game that will absorb rhythm game fans for a long time, with clever gameplay and, more importantly, a sensational soundtrack." - 9/10 God is a Geek
• "An easy recommendation for anyone wanting to take on its challenges." - 9/10 Game Rant

[h2]😃What YOU Think [/h2]
We really wanna know! Come join our Discord for maximum launch hype vibes! We're also on Bluesky now too! We'll also be closely monitoring in-game bug reports. 🔍👀

This is just the beginning for Rift, and we're so excited to be on this journey with y'all! You can also hang with us TODAY at our launch livestream with Klei at 2:00 PST.



P.S. The best way to support us is to grab the game during launch week, but if you wanna go the extra mile, we've also released a Supporter Upgrade with a couple cute cosmetics 💖

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3467170/Rift_of_the_NecroDancer_Supporter_Upgrade/

Thanks for grooving!

With love,

The Brace Yourself Games team

Hang out with us and celebrate the launch of Rift of the NecroDancer February 5th at 2pm Pacific Time!

https://twitch.tv/kleientertainment

See you there!

Hey everyone! We wanted to give you a heads-up that we're resetting the demo leaderboards next week on February 5th when the full game launches!

Thanks to your awesome feedback, we've made some changes to the final song charts for the full game (i.e. zombie and harpy pattern nerfs) and we want the demo to reflect those changes. This means a fresh start for all at launch! Have fun, and good luck climbing.

Here's the full run-down of changes you can expect to the demo:

• Leaderboards reset
  
• Updated beatmaps with nerfs for zombies and harpies
  
• Fixed the bug that wouldn't let you quit the game
  
• Updated some text to reflect when the game goes from 'coming soon' to 'out now' (!!)

ALSO, we're doing a launch stream with Klei on February 5th at 2:30PM PST, so if you have any burning questions for the devs, or just wanna hang out, mark it down in your calendars!

https://www.twitch.tv/kleientertainment

Hey there, NecroDancers! We’ve got some news about the state of the game, as well as a bit of a tempo change.

[h2]Rift of the NecroDancer is almost done[/h2]

Rift of the NecroDancer is coming along nicely. As of now, the game is pretty much content complete, and we're having a blast playing it. It’s been awesome to see everyone’s reactions to our demo too!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3029150/Rift_of_the_NecroDancer_Demo/

[h2]BUT... (you knew there was a "but," didn't you?)[/h2]

To hit a 2024 launch date, we would have needed to do some serious crunch to polish and bug-fix. Here at Brace Yourself Games, we're all about a sustainable groove, not the grind. We believe in making awesome games without sacrificing our team's well-being.

We decided to avoid cutting certain features to hit a 2024 launch date and possibly being forced into releasing something half-baked. So, we're taking a deep breath, stepping back, and giving Rift of the NecroDancer just a LITTLE bit more time in the oven.

One of the things we’re doing to give ourselves a little more time is decoupling Steam launch from additional platforms. This means that we’ll launch on Steam first, and follow on console at a later date. That date is still TBD, but we’re ready to share the Steam launch date, so keep reading!



[h2]What’s taking so long?[/h2]

You might be saying, “Brace Yourself Games, you already announced a delay last year. What’s going on? I want to play this game already!!!”

To that, I say SAME. But let me give you a little insight into what we’ve been doing this last year, and why we need just a couple more months.

1. IMPOSSIBLE Difficulty. The game was originally going to just have EASY, MEDIUM, and HARD, but we decided to add a fourth difficulty level: IMPOSSIBLE (previously known as EXPERT). IMPOSSIBLE is uh… really hard. We want a little extra time to tune this so it’s not actually impossible, right? But it’s still going to be really hard.
   
2. More Rhythm Rifts. We added even MORE Rhythm Rift beatmaps to songs like the boss battle tracks.
   
3. Off-beat Readability. The readability of off-beat monsters is probably our number one most received piece of feedback. We’ve been doing a lot of experimenting and playtesting to get this to a state we’re happy with.
   
4. Custom Music Tools. Thanks to the help of the dev behind Crypt of the NecroDancer: SYNCHRONY DLC, we did a full revamp of Rift’s internal level editing tool. Not only that, but we’re preparing it to be released publicly at launch so you can all use this tool to create custom charts to custom songs.
   
5. Remix Mode and Daily Challenges. Remix Mode started off as one of those “wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas that ended up actually being REALLY COOL. The TL;DR of Remix Mode is that it throws a fresh chart your way every playthrough while retaining the original level's rhythmic design. That makes Daily Challenges possible, by changing up the circumstances for each song. And we love Daily Challenges. We’d love to do a more in-depth blog about Remix Mode soon to talk about the nuances of developing Remix Mode!
   
6. Tutorial and Practice Mode Improvements. We’ve made a lot of improvements to our tutorials and practice mode based on feedback we received from the demo. The tutorials are more comprehensive, and we also added in a highly request slowdown functionality (up to 50%) into practice mode to help you better parse difficult patterns in high BPM songs.
   
7. Animation Clarity and Feel. We’ve gone through a bunch of iterations on character/monster animations throughout development. If you take a look at our very first trailer and compare it to the demo, you’ll see what a massive difference it is!
   
8. Background Visualizers. Technically no one asked for this, but this is something that we really wanted to do, and we discovered it adds a lot more visual variety to each Rhythm Rift, which helps us and content creators make better videos.
   
9. Boss Battle and Story Revamp. We felt there was room for improvement with the state of boss battles and story mode, so we decided to give these aspects a total facelift.
   
10. Shine Factor. We’ve addressed the majority of our high-impact bugs, but we want to make sure this game is polished to a mirror sheen!

With all that said…

[h2]Rift of the NecroDancer is launching February 5th, 2025.[/h2]

We're so confident in this new date that we're announcing it right now. No more "coming soon" or vague windows. Mark your calendars, folks, because the NecroDancer is opening the Rift on February 5th, 2025.

There you have it. We know it's a bit of a wait, and we are so grateful to have a community like you that trusts in us enough to let us cook for as long as we need. In the meantime, our Steam demo is still up, so if you haven’t checked that out, you should definitely give it a shot. We'll also keep you updated with behind-the-scenes peeks, and dev content. If you have any questions or just want to hang out with us while we finish this game, you should join our Discord. It would also be a great help to our team if you add Rift of the NecroDancer to your wishlist. 😊



Thanks for your understanding, your patience, and your endless enthusiasm for all things NecroDancer. We can't wait to share this game with you.

The Brace Yourself Games Team