The Indie Informer

Time works differently in Cryptmaster. I’ve put ten hours into it according to Steam and I’m tempted to call that a lie. I’m nowhere near done — too many side trips to go fishing or solve a riddle for that. But the moments that see my lively — though less than alive — group of adventures in danger slow down and my fingers can’t move fast enough. So, it feels simultaneously that I have spent more and fewer hours in the unique, typing-based experience.

For anyone too young to get my excellent title joke, Cryptmaster is a D&D-esque adventure built entirely around typing words. You can choose to play on controller, but the keyboard really is king here. The story sees four heroes of old resurrected in their tombs by a mysterious figure called the Cryptmaster.

The Cryptmaster is my constant, and chatty, companion. His snide attitude pours through every comment on my choices and, if I wasn’t already convinced he was the bad guy, his remarks clearly paint his villany. Though, some are just funny. Go ahead and type in rizz and see what he has to say.

In order to level up my adventurers, I have to remember bits and pieces of my past by filling in the literal blanks beneath each character. The empty slates at the bottom of the screen represent words, which I can begin to fill in by taking letters from the surrounding world — or making educated guesses.

The first words are short, simple, and revive each character’s lowest level attack. For example, Joro the warrior’s first word is three letters and it doesn’t take long to puzzle out it’s HIT. Now, I can attack little frog men and buzzing insects in battle. Combat can play out either in real time or via a turn-based system depending on what you pick at the starting screen, and the choice really comes down to how confident you are in your typing speed. I went with real time, which means baddies are coming at me as I race to type my characters moves. When I defeat an enemy, I can snatch a letter of their name away from them, giving me potential clues to the words under my party.

But there are other ways to fill in my knowledge gaps. Fishing is one of my favorites, where capturing a swimming creature requires typing out its name and reeling it in pulls a letter alongside it. This in an especially useful activity when you just need a minute to relax or your characters are on the verge of death and you don’t want to take on a foe that can fight back. Bugs crawling on the walls also present prime opportunities to avoid death (or, I guess, redeath in this case?)

When leaving the crypt for the first time, the game warns me I will no longer be able to use my abilities freely. I need souls to power my activities above ground and, lucky for me, grabbing bugs off the walls works just as well as fighting monsters to collect souls in my Soulstone. So most of the game plays interestingly with the balance between keeping my souls up and wanting to heal after every encounter. I can’t always do both.

Fondness for the written word goes even deeper, however, as I stumble across a series of talking skulls that present a riddle. These, if figured out, grant a treasure trove of free letters. However, they can be tricky and I’ve walked away from a few with nothing to show for it.

I’ve also just entered into a part of the game where I can make potions and, to my delighted surprise, all my captured fish and bugs now serve another purpose. In order to make, say, a love potion, I have to throw ingredients together whose names can spell out love potion. The “v” makes that particularly difficult. How many fish names have “v”s in them? And don’t worry about why I might need a love potion, you’ll get it when you play.

All of these word-centric systems roll together to make for a compelling loop, and perhaps this explains why, after ten hours, I’m only just above the crypt where I emerged. I’m eager to reach the surface and see what the Cryptmaster‘s ultimate plan is. I have my suspicions, but I hope the game gives me a chance to wipe the smile off the bony necromancer’s sarcastic face.