One of the first major decisions you face in Cryptmaster is how, exactly, to desecrate a holy altar. With the option to type in absolutely anything, your choices seem endless: you could smash the shrine, coat it in bodily fluids, or opt for something more artistic – such as graffiti. Whichever method you choose, the result feels wonderfully devious, with the altar toppling over and its furious deity cursing away in the background. Throughout your adventure, you are encouraged to be as naughty as possible, the game seemingly able to anticipate every bawdy thought that pops into your head. That’s because developers Paul Hart and Lee Williams know that once humans are given creative freedom, they want to push the limits. As such, Cryptmaster is keen to give voice to your intrusive thoughts – and to reward you for expressing them.
Defying precise genre labels, this is at once a dungeon crawler and something of a deck builder, but filled with every word-based puzzle you could imagine.
A consistent theme is that letters and words have power here, dictating everything from your characters’ combat skills to their health points. You begin your journey in the bowels of the earth, controlling a group of four undead heroes who have been reanimated by a mysterious horned necromancer. This character – the eponymous Cryptmaster – serves as your narrator and guide during your travels, providing sassy commentary and breaking the fourth wall in his disapproving drawl.
In the early stages, your main motivation is simply to escape your tomb, and shuffle upward through this underground world until you reach the surface.
And goodness, what a strange world this is, something quirky and unexpected waiting behind every creaking door. There’s a town filled with Aussie rats, a toad king looking for marriage, and a pied piper who needs help writing a diss track. It’s a place filled with oddballs and weirdos (your party included), and the sharp writing means NPC conversations frequently steal the show. You are regularly given opportunities to provide your own creative input in these chats, and the game is often uncannily good at predicting what you might say. Or, at least, it presents a very convincing illusion that it has an answer for everything. At one point the Cryptmaster asks how we will celebrate reaching the surface: our answer, ‘party’, is then shown to us on a piece of paper, with the Cryptmaster bragging that he already knew what we’d say. Since you can type any word at any time, it’s worth experimenting with your vocabulary to see if you can tease a witty response from the narrator. You might be surprised to hear what he has to say about modern slang such as ‘dab’ and ‘rizz’.
You need to choose your words wisely. It feels rather like being in the hot seat of a daytime TV g
