Cryptmaster

This is a really fresh take on a genre that I usually have absolutly no interest in, but the artstyle, the weird music choice, the exploration & combat gameplay and especially the writing and voice performances elevate this hidden gem

So, I love the time I spent in this game. I did need to look up some words, but we'll get to that later. It's fun, it's polished, it's beautiful, and it was obviously made with love. It did drag after a while, however. This is due to its central issue: balance. I would be harsher except the devs explained it excellently. I'll paraphrase. This game's "leveling" system is based on you guessing words. You get letters from combat and treasure chests. It's novel, it's fun, but you may see the problem already. Someone who's top-notch at guessing words or playing on stream will just breeze through the words, while others won't. I made it through to the last boss with only about 10% of the words cleared. This is a known issue, but they're working on addressing it. While I was playing, they patched in an option to get more letters from each battle to speed the process. I don't think it's a perfect solution, but it helps, and they're obiously looking to balance for more players. Faster collection should reduce the grindiness and progression for more casual solo gamers. Since it's an option, it shouldn't hurt group or stream play. My only real complaint, is I'm not sure I want to replay it. There are a few side-missions I didn't finish or missed, and there's a big scavenger hunt I skipped, but at this time, replay value seems to revolve around your interest in trying new, absurd responses to people and situations. Well, and the card game is . . . not great. But again, they're working on it. Two things to note, my score and the date of this review (20JUN2024). I did love this game, and it's so polished and detailed, I won't give it any less than five stars, and since it's in active development and addressing my major and minor concerns, it will likely address the issues in this review. If you think you're interested, I highly recommend it.

Try out the demo if you're unsure about this game. I think fun just sums it up best. I didn't think combining a first person dungeon crawler with wordle would have worked so well but it does.

Cryptmaster is a word guessing game that relies on your mastery of English. Actually, there are helpful accessibility options to allow even someone with a language impairment to get through, options which I did not use because I am a master linguinist-- no, I assure you linguinist is a real word. It's someone who cooks pasta and it's definitely not a word I made up. Come on, it's ten letters that HAS to be the answer, please please just let me have this. Visually it has a clear and beautiful style, where everything is black and white because presumably your eyeballs have long since rotted and this makes you colorblind. Or maybe it's the gloomy subsepulchural environment. Subsepulchral I swear that's a word, eleven letters what other word could POSSIBLY have two U's and two L's. The sound design likewise delivers a sort of homely auditory sound design. Auditory, eight letters, what do you mean that's the answer it has eight letters! In short, I enjoyed Cryptmaster. You probably need to enjoy words and English to like it, caveat emptor.