Never Grave

Never Grave Review: Pocketpair's Dead Cells, Fighting Its Own Touchscreen

Possess the Enemy, Loot the Dungeon, Rebuild the Village

The hook is the hat. Your character is a cursed hat's host; kill an enemy and the hat can possess its body, giving you that creature's abilities for the fight ahead — the mechanic a September 16, 2026 four-star singles out in a game it likens to Dead Cells. Dungeons — ruins, botanical gardens — are procedurally generated so the terrain changes each run, with obstacles, puzzles and bosses the listing says take more than pattern memorisation to clear without damage. Artefacts teach permanent abilities like the double-jump that open new areas, Metroidvania-style, while traits attached to magic and items change your build run by run. Between dives, materials clear the rubble of a ruined village, raise facilities and plant crops that become food and potions for the next attempt. The art is Japanese hand-drawn limited animation over painted, layered backgrounds.

The Controls: A Stick Too Small, a View Stick in the Wrong Place

Every substantive Play review is about the touch layout. The most-voted, an August 14 two-star with eight votes, says the game could be good if the controls were not horrendous: the movement joystick is too small and unresponsive unless touched dead centre, and the view joystick sits in an illogical place, serves little purpose and takes up space that should go to actions. A September 15 one-star calls them the worst touchscreen controls the reviewer has experienced, unresponsive with little room for error, while liking the concept. The September 16 four-star is kinder — clunky, but not yet bad enough to cause unwarranted deaths — and calls the game fun. The screenshots show it: a small pad bottom-left, an eye-icon view stick beside it, actions on the right. The listed gamepad support is the obvious fix, and none of the three reviewers mentions trying one.

$2.50, No Ads, No Purchases, No Data — Android Only

Pocketpair sells it outright: $2.50 on Google Play, no advertising badge, no in-app purchases in the listing's own terms, and a data-safety card that declares nothing collected and nothing shared. That is the Palworld studio's pricing carried over from the PC version, which launched on Steam in early access, and it makes Never Grave one of the few roguelites on the store with no economy at all. The floor is Android 8.0; Pocketpair does not publish a size. There is no iOS version and no App Store listing, so the numbers are Android's alone: 1,000-plus installs and 182 reviews at 3.7 six weeks after release, the rating held down by the controls rather than the game. Rated Teen for violence and blood. Prices are regional.