Crystal Catacombs Beta First Impression.

Crystal Catacombs Beta First Impression.

Before I start, please bear in mind that this game is still in beta and aspects of the game are subject to change, and I still don’t understand fully how the game works as I’ve only played roughly 2 hours so take my thoughts/criticisms with a pinch of salt. With that formality out of the way, let’s begin.

Crystal Catacombs is best described as an action-RPG with roguelike elements; this is due to the worlds/levels being randomly generated every time you play, ensuring you get a different experience with every playthrough, similar to games like Risk of Rain and Rogue Legacy. The visuals are somewhat reminiscent of another roguelike action-RPG; Legend of Dungeon, except here you are restricted to a 2D plain rather than being given free-reign of all 3 dimensions. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as one thing I found cumbersome with Legend of Dungeon was lining up hits in 3D when all of the characters are 2D 8-bit sprites, whereas you won’t have that trouble with Crystal Catacombs.

The story of Crystal Catacombs is fairly simple but gives a reason as to why you’re exploring these worlds; you play as a treasure hunter who is travelling in his airship, when suddenly a malevolent alien that looks oddly familiar to a Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons appears and captures you. This alien then forces you to explore these dangerous worlds that it has captured so you can defeat the bosses and find treasure. 

It won’t come as a surprise to roguelike fans that Crystal Catacombs puts up quite a challenge, you will die constantly until you eventually power through with items/XP points or just blind luck. The draw of roguelike games is this promise of challenge; that you have to earn your victory and that it feels rewarding when you defeat that one boss that has been killing you over and over. The player gaining XP points for killing monsters and leveling up represents the RPG portion of the game; but with my experience leveling doesn’t work as normal. In a regular RPG, traditionally your character levels up then your attributes increase by a set amount or by an amount chosen by the player. However here, unless I’m being totally ignorant of character changes (which is entirely possible) nothing really seems to happen. You won’t even be able to increase one of your attributes (HP, Attack, Defense or Mana) until you hit level 3-4.

There are 3 bars at the top right of the screen that represent your health, mana and XP. However I’ve never found an item that uses mana in anyway so far, but that might be me being unlucky with item drops. There are also gems you can collect which act as the games currency, although you’ll be lucky to find a shop before the last level of each world. There are item rooms on every level, and these can contain anything from a map for the entire level, which is very helpful, to a mystery potion that can do anything, and I mean anything. I drank a potion in one game that turned the entire world upside down and reversed the controls for a certain amount of time. Another pressing matter in the game HUD is the hourglass, which acts as the games timer; unfortunately this doesn’t actually tell you how much time you have left in the level. If the time runs out, then the Beholder alien will appear, chase you down and kill you instantly. But to soften the blow somewhat, every time you play you are given three lives, you can find more in shops and from killing tougher enemies but once you run out of lives, all of your upgrades are gone for good and you’ll have to start from square one.

All of this makes for a game that may not stray too far from action-RPG or even roguelike conventions, but it is still a very fun ‘come back for more’ kind of game. The only way to buy the game currently is through the developers website, you can pay $10 which gets you a DRM-free copy of the game on release, $15 gets you the game on release, a manual and the soundtrack (which I forgot to mention is really good), and for $20 you get all of the above as well as access to the latest beta builds of the game up until release. You can also vote for this game on Steam Greenlight, so if you want to see this game available on Steam in the future, go to their Greenlight page and give them a vote. I know I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this game and how it’s progressing, and I hope it gets more attention, as it really deserves to.

Crystal Catacombs is available for $10/$15/$20 from the developers website: http://levelsorlives.com/

You can vote for Crystal Catacombs on Steam Greenlight here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=211648956

You can follow the developers on Twitter here: @LevelsorLives

If you enjoyed my first impression of this game, please feel free to have a look at my other reviews and let me know what you think, what’s good and what’s not. You can also follow me on Twitter at @itsmattwilmott