Crypt Custodian Review (PC) | Smash Jump

Metroidvanias are known for common elements that challenge and frustrate players of the genre: brutal combat, complex puzzles, challenging platforming, and, of course, massive maps with bramble-like twists and turns. These commonalities are part of the charm of this genre but comes at the detriment of new players who find it cumbersome to navigate a massive twisting map or master a precise jump sequence. Crypt Custodian is an attempt to simplify this experience — to create a metroidvania that relaxes rather than stresses. Through playful writing, a charming art style, relaxing music, calming atmosphere, and creative level design, it creates a solid entry-level metroidvania experience for new players but will likely leave veterans of the genre wanting for more depth.

A peaceful rest

The premise of Crypt Custodian is fairly somber considering its charming art style and colorful nature. You play as Pluto, a cat who just recently passed away and now must be judged by the afterlife overseer, a frog lady named Kendra. The way to Kendra was blocked by statues of herself, the only way forward being to acquire a dusty old broom and smash those statues to smithereens. Unfortunately, these statues belonged to Kendra, and as a result, despite your good life prior to this encounter, Kendra decides you are too naughty to be allowed into the illustrious Palace and instead banishes you to be a janitor forever into an underworld aptly named “Outside of the Palace.” Now, you must explore this new afterlife, gather a group of other spectral animal friends similarly banished by Kendra and break into the Palace where a magical mirror awaits to allow you one last night with your loved ones back in the realm of the living.

It’s both a sad and goofy introduction. On the one hand, the way that Pluto and other characters talk about their lives before their untimely demise is touching and pulls at heartstrings. On the other, Kendra’s actions and the personalities of your fellow spirits lean on the comedic and cartoony. Keeping a balance between heartfelt and hilarious is a thin tight rope that developer Kyle Thompson is able to walk brilliantly. Each character is bursting with personality even with only a handful of written dialogue. Grizz, a scrafty alley cat with a penchant for digging and mischievous behavior, Mira, an eccentric indecisive bunny more worried about her next t-shirt than the world around her, and Pebble, an innocent and timid frog who actually enjoys all of the cleaning she was tasked to do, are all standout characters that elevate the story and breathe life into this land of the departed.

Just as important in creating a full and realized world is the art style and music. This is a place of rest, after all, and Crypt Custodian leans into the idea of peace. Despite the afterlife for Pluto and the other animal spirits being filled with trash and strange hostile monsters, the actual world itself is serene and graceful. Characters are simple in design with soft, round edges, minimal shading, and simple geometric shapes that declare a personality upon first glance. The ground you walk and environments around you are colorful, vibrant, varied, and have a painterly quality. Finally, the music accompanying your adventure, composed by the developer’s brother, Eric Thompson, gives you a sense of comfort and relaxation. Consistent bass, light keyboard notes, and soft tones grant it a lo-fi quality that really takes the edge off the experience. I felt at peace while walking through this land of spirits and monsters, staring at all of the beautiful artwork and environments around me.

Curiosity killed the cat

While exploring each of the diverse and painterly levels of Crypt Custodian you will begin to encounter various gimmicks associated with each level. Some will require you to traverse in a specific way, others may require you to have precise timing while platforming, and still more will ask you to solve some kind of puzzle to unlock a door blocking progress. Most of the gimmicks are isolated from the others and grant the level a distinct identity while providing interesting and fun new ways to interact with the world.

In one area, an old and abandoned amusement park, you begin by using stationary platforms of broken down rides. Later in the level, you encounter a generator that, with one good smack from your trusty broomstick, flashes on and brings the rides to life allowing you now to traverse across them as moving platforms. Sometimes this means a rolling rollercoaster that you need to time correctly as you hop from one car to another. Other rides include these circular pads which spin around and around until you pick the right direction to jump off of. In another area, a blue ethereal area seemingly outside the normal bounds of the afterlife, your dash move now morphs the level around you. Each time you dash, platforms and enemies will pop in and out of the world causing you to strategically consider when to dash out of danger when fighting groups of enemies or which platforms will appear when next you dash. These gimmicks, while simple in nature, do enough to vary exploration and interaction with each area to keep the experience fresh and fun.

Often, the gimmicks in each area will be incorporated into a puzzle you will need to solve in order to progress or unlock a collectable secret. For experienced puzzle-solvers, this will be a cakewalk. They rarely were complicated enough to stump me for too long. The most thought-stretching puzzles were timing puzzles in which a cute white-ember needs to be smacked in different directions in order to light up several campfires. Once all are lit, a door opens. These are the trickiest of the puzzles in Crypt Custodian and even these are often as simple as smacking an ember into a wall before moving and smacking it again in a different direction mid-flight. Experienced players may find this lackluster but Crypt Custodian leans into the friendly over the obtrusive. Players new to the genre or puzzle-solving in this style of game should have no fear in tackling the many puzzle challenges awaiting them.

Becoming lost in Crypt Custodian is certainly possible. While the map itself does allow for marking, it can become quite large and unwieldy. There is no mini-map to see which direction your markers are, no giant arrow saying “go here!” At least, not technically. In the main shop there is an option to add a marker on your map for either items missed in previous areas or, more importantly, a giant red exclamation mark telling you the exact next area you should complete. This is very helpful for new players and those of us who find it easy to get lost in the labyrinth of a metroidvania. This inclusion is a boon to the genre that should be incorporated in all Metroidvanias going forward.

Adding onto the new-player friendly nature is the checkpoint system. Scattered throughout the game are various water wells which serve as checkpoints to save your game, teleport around (you can also do this anywhere), and adjust your equipped special moves and upgrades. Checkpoint placement is generous with usually around three or four per level depending on its size, and always one right before a boss fight. The distance from checkpoint to checkpoint can vary, and there were a few times when I was quite relieved to see one after what felt like a long arduous time exploring an area, but generally they are forgiving. Quite frankly, they need to be.

Unlike other games in the genre — Hollow Knight as the prime example — your health is not recoverable outside of a checkpoint. You’re given four health points to start but can grow it to five with an upgrade. In something like Hollow Knight, as you hit and defeat enemies, you build up a meter which can be used to either unleash a special attack or heal your character. In Crypt Custodian, you’re only allowed to use special moves, no healing allowed. Thankfully, the healing is not necessary due to the generosity of checkpoints and their proximity to boss fights as well as the relative ease of combat itself.

One Trusty Broomstick

Combat is everywhere in Crypt Custodian. Every new level comes filled with various creatures attempting to do our feline hero harm. Enemies themselves are interesting in design and their placements in each level are deliberate, often creating chaos when many are on screen at once firing various projectiles at you from all directions. Unfortunately, the tools with which to dispatch these foes are over-simplified leaving me unsatisfied with an aspect of the game that took up half of the playtime.

In Crypt Custodian, your main weapon is that same old trusty broomstick you first picked up at the beginning of the game. This does not change and remains your trusty companion throughout. Instead of adjusting the weapon itself, several upgrades and special moves are made available to spice up combat. These are minor buffs that can be stacked and combined with other upgrades to juice up Pluto to your liking. I preferred to equip a health upgrade for that one last bit of survivability, a generic upgrade that increased damage on attacks, and one which gave me a small little spirit who would follow me around and attacked enemies after a few seconds. While I enjoyed the creativity of some upgrades, I found them largely ineffective.

The fireballs my little spirit companion would fire rarely did enough damage to significantly change any combat scenario. The health and damage buffs were nice but also simplistic. Despite the fact that upgrades are interchangeable at any rest point, I never once felt the need to swap them out to handle a specific level or boss fight. In fact, I found them so insignificant that I would forget I had upgrade points entirely. Supermoves, while flashy, also never felt like they did enough damage to really impact a battle. Instead, combat tended to boil down to “mash attack to win” with the only question being how many times you could mash it before having to dodge. This is a huge disappointment given that combat takes up so much of the game even going as far as having multiple areas locked behind these battle arenas you must complete before progress can be made.

Kitty’s first Metroidvania

Crypt Custodian is a simplistic and inviting game. It manages to miss many of the pitfalls that can turn players off from the metroidvania genre. You won’t have to worry about complex puzzles, intense platforming, brutal combat, or a labyrinthine map. It’s a game that wants you to relax with it rather than stress with it. It wants to guide you through a peaceful adventure rather than force you to reckon with an arduous journey. While it excels in this respect, it leans too heavily into it leaving experienced fans of the genre gaps in their experience that will not be satisfied.

Combat is too simplistic and upgrades leave too little impact on the battlefield. Crypt Custodian, ultimately, is a charming adventure meant to relax rather than stress and which tried to help the player along rather than hinder their progress. It is a great introduction to the metroidvania genre for new players that leans too heavily into its simplicity to elevate it into the pantheon of all-time greats in the genre.