Crypt Custodian assessment | PC Gamer

Crypt Custodian sounds just like the identify of a tricky man ARPG, nevertheless it’s truly an enthralling metroidvania starring my favorite videogame cat of 2024. It is an actual disgrace he needed to die.

Pluto has fallen off a ledge and snuffed it. It is an abrupt and unwelcome dying however there is a silver lining: since he is spent his life being a pleasant puss to some loving house owners, he should not have any downside entering into The Palace, which is the place good useless pets go once they die.

Alas, Pluto breaks some stuff throughout what’s successfully an afterlife job interview, so capricious Palace Guardian Kendra decides he isn’t allowed in in any case. As an alternative of an eternity of idyll, Pluto is made a Palace door janitor. It isn’t a fantastic end result, clearly. But it surely seems different animals have fallen unfairly afoul of Kendra too, and it isn’t lengthy earlier than a plot emerges to interrupt out of the Palace’s partitions and escape to… the place?

Crypt Custodian is a sport by Kyle Thompson, whose earlier work consists of Islets and Sheepo. Each are breezy motion metroidvanias starring animals, and all share a particular artwork fashion. Creature designs borrow closely from Nineteen Thirties and Forties cartoons, however Thompson would not appear keen on rote nostalgia. Animations have a contemporary fluidity that makes them really feel much less like a interval piece in comparison with, say, Cuphead. Like Thompson’s earlier video games, Crypt Custodian is a beautiful factor in motion. The crisp unfussiness of its artwork is an ideal match for its precision-oriented motion.

Whereas Islets and Sheepo have been sidescrollers, Crypt Custodian opts for a top-down view, bringing it nearer to one thing like Hyper Gentle Drifter or Demise’s Door (it shares the latter’s calmly mordant sense of humour, too). It is significantly simpler than both of these, or at the very least, its problem curve has a a lot smoother gradient. 

Pluto wields a humble broom which features like a sword. Fight stays uncomplicated all through your complete sport, however the problem lies in its bullet hell trappings. Fights are much less about fancy assaults and extra about balletic manoeuvring between typically erratic projectiles, whether or not with the brisk i-frame laden dodge or cautious weaving by means of the fray. Within the vein of Hole Knight, the controls are tuned tightly sufficient that, easy although they’re, broom fights remained punchy and enjoyable for greater than 20 hours.

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Selection comes from the array of powers Pluto accumulates through the journey, and there is not only one tier of improve right here, however three. There’s the standard metroidvania progress skills, together with a ghost double of Pluto for puzzle fixing and a brush projectile (dubbed the “broomerang”) which may set off distant switches. Finally there’s an improve that lets Pluto warp to wherever he can throw his broomerang, and one other that lets him burrow tunnels within the floor.

There are additionally much less consequential upgrades tied to some extent system, that means the extra improve factors you acquire all through the world, the extra upgrades you need to use without delay. These embody easy buffs to well being and assault, but in addition extra artistic choices like one which makes enemies explode upon dying. Additionally within the combine are particular assaults, which may solely be activated one after the other and are topic to cooldowns. I tended to stay to the temporary second of invincibility afforded by the Spirit’s Protect, however there are a selection of offensive assaults like land mines and homing projectiles.

This two-tier system, unnecessarily complicated although it might appear, feels particularly essential for boss battles. Whereas I discovered Crypt Custodian principally low stress, some bosses required me to rigorously optimise my “construct,’ although I typically did not should suppose a lot throughout regular moment-to-moment world traversal. Bosses fall again on the outdated sample recognition, with their mechanical familiarity offset by whimsical spectacle.

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Attraction is, ultimately, one thing Crypt Custodian leans on very closely. Whereas the map is big, most areas are simply flat pathways strewn with obstacles, with solely a coloration scheme and wispy vague skybox to tell apart them. It will definitely makes the hard-fought discovery of a brand new space really feel much less thrilling than it normally is in these kinds of video games.

Sure, it does often really feel monotonous, particularly after I realized that I may simply run previous most enemies quite than struggle them. 

Then again, I cherished Crypt Custodian’s modesty, which is a bizarre factor to like a few videogame. Let me clarify: for a very long time I stored anticipating Crypt Custodian to shock me with some unbelievable new energy, or loopy hidden depth. This by no means materialised. I finally understood that, except for being a mechanically impeccable videogame, that is additionally a cool factor a single individual made with the assistance of their brother (Eric Thompson contributes the Boards of Canada-esque soundtrack). Although it fails to intrigue on the identical stage, it shares the intimacy of fellow sole-developed indie Animal Nicely. It has a selected imaginative and prescient that might solely have been smudged had different palms been concerned.

Throughout a 12 months that has felt near-apocalyptic for the business, it is productive to be reminded {that a} videogame can simply be a bizarre factor one individual made as a lot for enjoyable as for revenue.