Cryptmaster Preview: A Comical Typing Crawler

Paul Hart and Lee Williams have hand-crafted an utterly enjoyable and unique experience with Cryptmaster. This first-person dungeon-type adventure had me enthralled and laughing the entire time. Even while writing this preview, I found myself chuckling as I remembered the special sauce Cryptmaster brings to the table. Cryptmaster is a refreshing product with surprisingly high levels of accessibility in a niche genre that this title could well define.

Weaponize Your Letters

Cryptmaster’s simple yet effective hand-drawn black-and-white dungeons pop on the screen. Especially in the first-person view, players will enjoy Crytmaster’s simple look as it is comfortably partnered with its simple mechanics of movement and typing. Players should not expect to be typing compound sentences as during my playtime of the demo, I only typed single words, with the max length being seven or eight letters. 

For instance, the very first segment of the demo tasked me with deciphering what was in a chest. I instructed, who I assume is the Cryptmaster, to taste, look, feel, smell, etc. This allowed the Cryptmaster to complete those actions and verbally tell me what he gathered. Once you know the item, type it, and voila. You do not take the item. Instead, you receive letters for each of the four characters at your disposal from the game's opening at the bottom of your screen. You could receive the letter' ‘i' in your warrior character's word. If the 'i' is in the middle of a three-letter word, it's safe to assume that the word is "hit."

These four characters at your disposal have skills you can unlock by typing them into their allotted slots as you see their missing words below them. You can type phrases like hit, strike, yell, and even crabs. Not only do each of their skills have an action that transpires, but I enjoyed guessing what these skills could be. Each of the four characters below appeared only to have three available skills to uncover, but each character had a page worth of commands to be uncovered.

Small tip: if you type hit and hit is the last command or skill you used that started with 'h,' simply typing 'h' will initiate the action, making the demand on those who can type or not much less severe.

The characters' names are also written with loose letters to represent their health. Don't worry; you can use a skill to heal up once you've taken damage in combat.

Mastering Your Letters

Combat is also via typing, but it is slow to compensate for that. Turn-based mode is also available when booting up the game, so don't worry if you cannot type quickly. It is much more forgiving for those who cannot type as quickly. For a concept so reliant on typing, it does well in making itself accessible.

Moreover, controller support and turn-based mode are available for those more attuned to those playstyles, and additional settings include color tints, draw distance, volumes, subtitles, hints, and more.

For those wondering, yes, you can type profanity. For your sake, I did the heavy-hitting journalism and typed words like fart and poop. The Cryptmaster’s VO will adapt to what you type, but when I typed poop, the game basically threatened to quit on me. So be careful.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, once I answered a door’s questions correctly after trial and error, the demo just ended. I was bummed. Not because the demo let me down, however, but because I wanted to jump back in and keep messing with the intricacies of this game. So, I did. And I loved it.

Cryptmaster is a unique title worth your attention. It portrays a sense of unlimited possibility with such a simple concept. The whole package is littered with magical and comical moments that were made readily accessible for everyone with a keyboard or controller.

Written by Austin Ernst