I only made a couple of purchases in the recent Steam Summer Sale but haven't written about my last minute purchase. I decided to grab a game that look a bit odd but had overwhelmingly positive reviews--Cryptmaster. Recently I played through the main story and am ready to share some thoughts and recommendations.
What is it?
An old-school style dungeon crawler with a word game twist. You play as a squad of mysterious heroes who have been resurrected by your guide, the demonic character known as the cryptmaster. Gameplay involves searching through various dungeon-like areas and battling various enemies (in a unique way), solving guessing game-like puzzles and riddles.
How long does a playthrough last?
This can likely vary greatly depending on several factors--if you're very stubborn and refuse to use hints/solutions for riddles you can't solve; if you decide to fully unlock your characters (I will explain); or if you decide to try to solve many of the mysterious side puzzles/tasks. I completed a full story playthrough in a little over 15 hours but did not put much effort into any side tasks.
Pros:
+ A fun minimalist sort of art style that can be slightly modified. The default color palette is black and white but can be altered in the settings. I enjoyed the artwork for the characters and environments.
+ Unique gameplay. The dungeon crawling aspect is just as you would expect--you use the arrow keys to move your team square by square toward your objective. There is no full size map, but there is a handy mini-map so you don't get the full layout of the areas you are exploring (back in the day, if you were anal retentive enough you would bust out the graph paper and draw yourself a map). The truly creative aspect of the game involves unlocking abilities for your squad and combat. Each member of your four person squad has a number of letter tiles next to their names. As you unlock abilities you learn new typing attacks that are used in combat--for example, a very basic attack for Joro is "hit." When you engage in combat you type the abilities for your characters (your squad is made up of four heroes that each have their own abilities). There's a cooldown timer for your characters and enemies so you're not constantly typing, but it is fairly fast-paced. Your health bar (and the enemy's) is made up of the letters in their name(s). Once you've full defeated them you get to choose 2-3 letters from their name to unlock. These letters can help fill in the letter blocks for your squad and either unlock memories or new abilities. You don't have to fully unlock each letter and can type in the letters anytime you think you've figured out the word for your heroes.
Each member of your squad has sort of a traditional setup--Joro is the warrior, Syn is the rogue, Maz is the bard, and Nix is the seawitch (that one is a bit unique). The abilities you unlock can be specific attacks, buffs, heals, dodges/guards/taunts, etc. Effectively utilizing them in combat is the tricky part.
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| An example of a skull riddle. |
+ Optional puzzles/riddles. Throughout each area are chests and skull totems that offer up additional opportunities to unlock letters. Chests involve a sort of sensory guessing game about what the object is--you can ask the cryptmaster to provide certain clues based on commands like "touch" and eventually figure out what it is. Once you figure out the item, you earn all the letters in the name. Skull totems involve riddles--(some are traditional and some are just silly) and you get several guesses. If you guess wrong it will give you a one letter hint (but you get less of a reward). You can only get 1-2 hints depending on the length of the riddle. You can also toggle on/off the ability to have the cryptmaster solve them for you once you've gone through all your guesses. Both chests and skull totems are completely optional so you can skip them if you find them annoying.
+ Two gameplay modes--realtime means that there are no pauses in combat--you type in abilities when they're off cooldown and enemies attack the same way. Turn-based mode allows more time to choose abilities and the cooldown timer ticks down each time you type in an ability. I found the realtime to be very fast and difficult to effectively strategize. Turn-based allows pauses to peruse the long list of abilities for each characters and more effectively utilize the numerous buffs/abilities that you unlock. It's nice to have two different gameplay modes for a faster and slightly slower experience.
+ Humor that is funny without being annoying. There are some juvenile jokes sprinkled throughout and some of the characters are funny (or have humorous backstories).
+ Hidden/side puzzles if you're looking for more to do. In one area there are a bunch of tombstones with clues about how someone died that you can solve. (I could not figure them out and did not expend much time on them).
+ Side activities like fishing and a deck builder card game. Fishing is a good way to gather souls (they're sort of like your ammunition for using abilities) and letters--it's very basic; you type in the name of the fish and then click the arrow when it lands on the letter you're trying to get. If you wait too long you'll lose the fish. The card game is called Whatever and is part Scrabble and part deck-builder. You unlock cards with the name of certain characters and can build a deck. You get a slate of letter tiles and can choose two per turn--if the letters appear in the name of the card it will attack for its value. Once you fully fill in the card name it will carry out its specific ability (some cards do additional damage, some create "wild" letters, etc.). Each character has 40 hit points and your goal is to deplete all the hit points for your opponent. It's surprisingly fun and there are many characters to play and defeat (which unlocks new cards to add to your deck).
+ There is controller support (although, I don't know why you would want to use a controller since the game is basically about typing, but you do you).
+ Unlocking memories/background stories for your squad. In my playthrough I only unlocked about 1/3 of the memories and abilities for my squad. There's replayability in being more thorough about finding more (I skipped a lot of side puzzles which I'm sure would provide more letters for unlocking). Memories are signaled by black tiles and abilities are white; memories give short blurbs about the background of each character and help you learn about the squad.
Cons:
- Realtime gameplay is quick and combat can feel unsatisfactory. The game default recommends realtime, but I would opt for the turn based style. As you unlock more and more abilities it can be difficult to keep them straight and the turn-based style does give you time to plan. If you're a slow typer of make lots of typos...it could be downright frustrating.
- Objectives can be murky at times. You have a sort of general objective, but figuring out exactly what you need to do often just involves searching until you find an item or stumble across something. Basically, just explore everything. There are certain areas where I never figured out exactly what the point of them was.
- There's no "big" map in the game (honestly, that's old-school dungeon crawler style,) and navigating can be a bit tricky. You can look up maps online if you're totally lost.
Recommendation:
If you're someone who likes word games, word puzzles, and riddles, Cryptmaster will be right up your alley. In the first half of the game I was delighted with the unique style (in the second half...definitely less so but I regret not playing on turn-based). There is a lot of side content to keep you entertained and thinking.
