Crypt Custodian

A fun, wholesome catroidvania

I think there are enough indie metroidvanias with animal protagonists out there that we can give them their own subgenre: Hollow Knight, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Ori and the Blind Forest, Laika: Aged Through Blood (just to name a few), and now Crypt Custodian.

Crypt Custodian is a hand-drawn metroidvania that puts you in the boots of a house cat named Pluto, who’s recently died in an accident and is now sentenced to clean the afterlife for eternity. The game tells a simple, minimal, wholesome story about a group of ghosts who all left something behind. The story is told through short conversations between the characters, objects in the environment, and the collectible photos you find that show you snapshots of how the characters lived and how they died. While this simple story definitely adds to the overall experience, it does a great job of not taking itself too seriously and not getting in the way. As non-intrusive as the game’s story elements are, if you want, you can skip all of them and get straight into action.

Similar to most other metroidvanias, Crypt Custodian’s main gameplay elements are platforming, fighting enemies, unlocking the map one room at a time, and collecting stuff. Platforming is probably the simplest and easiest part of the game. While there are a few challenges that make you focus on your timing, you can probably breeze through most of the platforming sections without breaking a sweat.

Crypt Custodian’s combat is just as simple, but much deadlier. Your moveset consists of attacking, jumping, dashing, and using special moves. That’s it! There are a handful of different special moves to choose from and a wider variety of upgrades that give you some passive bonus each (such as filling your special move jar(!) more quickly). You can equip any number of upgrades at the same time as long as you have the upgrade points for them. You can buy new special moves, upgrades, and more upgrade points or find them through exploration. Thankfully, there’s only one in-game currency that is easily earned and lets you buy a bunch of different stuff.

As simple as Crypt Custiodian’s combat is, it’s also fun and challenging. Each area has its own set of enemies with unique attack patterns. The game usually introduces each enemy separately and then pits you against several types of them at the same time. That’s where it gets challenging. It’s easy to forget about that one rogue projectile creeping your way when you’re trying to dodge two other attacks at the same time. Considering you lose one life for each hit and you can never have more than five lives despite being a cat, you die a lot. However, the game never feels unfair. The controls are highly responsive, and the enemy attacks are telegraphed clearly. Dying is not that punishing either. You just spawn back at the last checkpoint, which is usually not that far away.

Most of the areas include a boss battle. The bosses are unique, well-designed, and the most challenging part of the game. It takes a few tries to learn their movesets, especially since all of them have two phases, but they’re short, and the last checkpoint is never too far. These battles are also pretty fast-paced, which I find to be a positive. You’re not just dodging, dodging, dodging for that one millisecond window to chip at the boss’s seemingly infinite health bar; in Crypt Custodian, you’re actively fighting the boss while trying to stay out of harm’s way.

It’s not a metroidvania if you’re not filling out a huge map piece by piece, and Crypt Custodian is no exception. I think the game could’ve benefited from more puzzles and hidden or hard-to-reach areas. While there are a few rooms that require some level of problem-solving and outside-the-box thinking to reach, most rooms are locked behind an ability that you are yet to access. But on the bright side, the game does a perfect job of holding tedium to a minimum without babysitting you too much. There are a lot of checkpoints that you can warp to from anywhere on the map, customized markers that you can leave on the map to remind you of the areas or items that you couldn’t previously access, an upgrade that signals the presence of an item, and purchasable markers that show you your next objective or an item that you missed. Exploration is aptly rewarded as well. Apart from the photos that give you cute (albeit sometimes very sad) bits of backstory, all the other collectible give you in-game rewards as well.

It’s mostly a matter of preference, but in my opinion, Crypt Custodian looks and sounds beautiful. The game’s sharp, hand-drawn visuals with its dynamic color palette portray the feel-good vibes of the story, and its melodic, synthetic soundtrack (some tracks of which still playing in my head) reflect the quiet but not-that-gloomy atmosphere of this iteration of afterlife.

Crypt Custodian was developed by a solo developer, Kyle Thompson, whose brother Eric composed the music for it. As if that’s not impressive enough, I did not encounter a single bug in my 16 hours of playtime, which is more than I can say about multi-million-dollar games developed by soulless corporations with thousands of employees. It might not be the best in anything. It’s not a game you can brag about beating. And it doesn’t have everyone talking about it by causing some sort of controversy or something. But it’s a wholesome, fun, aesthetically pleasing, and surprisingly polished experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Therefore, I believe Crypt Custodian is definitely a worthy entry into my completely made-up pantheon of “indie metroidvanias with animal protagonists”.

Rating: 70/100