Iron Crypticle is one of the best Indie games of the year. At the core, the game is a top-down twin-stick rogue-like dungeon crawler with some RPG elements. It is up to 4 player local co-op, and you are a knight navigating rooms in the dungeon to recover the Princess along with the King’s treasures. The rooms for each level are random on each playthrough and with three difficulty levels, it brings a challenge to even the most worthy knight.
Each basic room consists of two waves of monsters, which you need to defeat to proceed. The enemies drop food items, which increase your score, and the level of your knight, as well as weapons that you can use for a short duration. The more levels you have, the more HP you’ll have, and the more upgrades you can get on your four stats (Damage, Attack Speed, Movement Speed, and Weapon Duration). There are a few special rooms, but I will not spoil the fun and let you discover them on your own.
There is an unlockable system, so as you play new types of weapons will drop, as well as one time use scrolls. One of the biggest challenges I’ve found with games that use a unlocking system like this is an early weapon is one of the best, and the new ones never have any usefulness. This leaves the player in a situation where the pool of items has become so large that they no longer get the good weapons. The developers at Confused Pelican and Tikipod have done a great job with this. All weapons are well balanced, there are weapons that attack at a long range, but do less damage, and close-range weapons that do a lot of damage. The only weapon I did not like was the grenade, as it is the only weapon that does not hit enemies right in front of you, but does massive damage at range.
Art is done in a retro style and looks really good, there is a variety of enemies with different attacks and movement patterns, and the music is well done. There are boss fights at the end of each level of the dungeon and it is random which boss, and what version of the boss you get. There is also a New Game+ mode after completing the story once and an Endless mode for many more hours of gameplay. There is a Leaderboard to compete with your friends and others to try to get the highest scores.
For such a simple concept, there is a lot to this game. I can tell that the developers took inspiration from the arcade classic Smash TV when designing this game, and they pulled it together perfectly. Iron Crypticle is a really fun game to play solo, and even more fun to play on the couch with your friends. This is a gem in the sea of Indie games.
