Crystal Catacombs

When it comes to challenging games, few come close to the roguelike games in terms of sheer organ-punching difficulty levels, and Crystal Catacombs is no exception.  Spawned from a successful Kickstarter, Crystal Catacombs has finally left beta and is now available for everyone. With the game’s difficulty, retro-style music, familiar controls and unique pixel art graphical style, it is almost guaranteed to charm any gamer with a love for extremely difficult games. If you don’t like games like that, then you’re out of luck with this title.

The story is about a young man, named Captain Vasil Ravencraft, who is traveling on his ship across the ocean to get to get to the famous Crystal Catacombs, a fortress that holds many portals to different realms. Not much is known about this place, other than the fact that no one has ever come back alive. It is up to you to explore this strange new world and retrieve all it has to offer. It’s a pretty simple little story that is reminiscent of classic NES and SNES titles, which is just fine for a game based heavily around the world and exploration rather than something like character growth. There are many collectables for you to get and, just like in most games of this genre, everything is randomly generated so no two playthroughs will be the same. Walkthroughs are nearly useless for this sort of game other than giving you strategies for the monsters you are about to fight. Most of those monsters seem to be original creations, but for those who are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons: you might see a few familiar faces along the way. Especially the games main villain (the Destroyer) resembles the Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons, and seems to have the same sort of cunning for he is the one instigating all of the games events.

Level design has just the right balance of classic nostalgia driven levels with some nuances in the form of the artwork and the monsters you find within the levels themselves. Each boss fight is unique in how you defeat it, and things that might have been a hazard to you previously can be used to your advantage in the upcoming fight. This is a game where it is vital to pay attention to everything since you never know when any of this will show up in one of your next boss fights. Knowing how the environments work for and against you is what’s the most important thing about this game; it can be the difference between life and death and believe me you’ll be dying a lot even with this nugget of knowledge.

The game has 4 modes of play, each of which makes your personal gaming experience different or more difficult. These modes vary from the “easy” Normal mode where you get five lives and can pick in what order you play the stages, to the extraordinarily difficult Rogue mode, and then there’s Survival mode where you aren’t even trying to beat the game, only to survive for as long as possible.

Crystal Catacombs has been in beta for quite some time now and issues that players had with the game then have been since addressed and fixed. The former jumping issues that were talked about in beta reviews have been addressed and the controls as tight as a drum.  The controls are solid with everything being very responsive controls-wise.

If you aren’t familiar with roguelike games or if you want try one, then it’s probably better to look for another entry-level one. Crystal Catacombs is ruthless; it expects you to know the controls and the entire game right off the bat. Even those that are experienced with this genre have difficulties jumping into a game like this pretty much cold and immediately getting assaulted with various monsters. While not being beginner friendly isn’t a bad thing, the learning curve for the game is a bit steep, making this sort of game alienating for those who aren’t hardcore fans of this sort of genre. This game obviously isn’t made for them though, and the people it is made for will find this game satisfying in many ways if they want a new roguelike to play. It has everything to appease someone who highly enjoys the games of the distant past because this game was designed to cater to them: the music, the art style, the gameplay, the extreme difficulty, this game was made for those who want to have their mettle tested against a truly difficult game.

The problem is that the game might be harder than it should be. Not because of its difficulty curve, but because of its greatest strength and weakness, the art style.  Even with its tight controls the art style ends up doing as much harm as it does good.  There are times where you can’t tell what’s in the area around you and you end up trigger a trap, or you think that the ground is clear, but it’s actually covered in bright green enemies that blend into the background.  Everything is just too small and there were times where I actually had to strain my eyes to see what just happened.   The resolution of the game doesn’t exceed 1280x720, which does prove to be an issue for those with a computer where that’s the ideal resolution for games.  It makes the game just difficult to play and not nearly as fun as it could be.

With all of that said, it is still a strong title, and for eight dollars on Steam it’s a good purchase that will test your mettle as a gamer, but whether or not it’s for the right reason is really up to the player.