Join the Adventure In Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists
Now’s a great time to dive into Alruna and the Necro-Industrialists. This pixel-art puzzle-platformer from Neckbolt has arrived on Nintendo Switch this March. It’s also available on Steam for PC players.
In the game, you’ll step into a broken world where machines have taken over, and guide Alruna, a forest spirit, through shadowy tunnels and forgotten ruins. With quick moves and sharp instincts, she pushes deeper into the earth, chasing a story buried far below the surface. The dead still reach for Heaven. But down here, all they do is dig.
“What is perhaps the most central line of dialogue in Alruna,” says developer Niklas Hallin, “is hidden away in the very bottom of the Engineer’s Palace. Right before the necro-industrialist boss modeled after the Tarot card The Devil the elder crone talks about the hollowing out of the world and says to Alruna: ‘Sleep now in the fire. Preach now to the choir.’” and continues:
“‘Sleep now in the fire’ is of course a song by Rage Against the Machine. A lot of the game’s writing incorporates song lyrics, actually. The song is about the overwhelming onslaught of conservative propaganda and their insatiable greed. But I immediately rhyme that line with “preach now to the choir”, because… look, we’ve all heard Rage Against the Machine. We all know these things. Exploitative industrialism, hierarchical ideology, power and oppression – it’s basic shit. You’ve already lived it every day of your life. Progressive politics is just the starting point here, the base-line.”
“And yet!” Niklas stresses: ”Nothing here is about apathy or hopelessness. The struggle is the point. Victory is a luxury. We respond to doom-and-gloom by becoming even more unhinged, ungovernable and enraged. Alruna is most of all an angry game.
ALRUNA and the NECRO-INDUSTRIALISTS.
Rage against the Machine.”