Review: CRYPT CUSTODIAN (Nintendo Switch)
CRYPT CUSTODIAN is an action adventure game developed by Kyle Thompson and published by Top Hat Studios. I was intrigued by this game initially because it’s set in the afterlife and you play as a cat. What more could you want? Thankfully, the game turned out to be as much fun as advertised.
You play as Pluto, a cat who has recently died. They wake up in the afterlife, surrounded by other spirits (mostly frogs). Your first task, which acts as a simple tutorial, is to make your way from where you landed in the afterlife to the palace, where you’ll have a meeting with Kendra, the Afterlife Guardian. She’ll then tell you whether you can move on in bliss or get banished. It’s all dependent on how good Pluto was when alive. Unfortunately, Pluto gets banished and gets sentenced to clean the afterlife for all eternity. Now the game truly begins.
With your trusty broom as your weapon, Pluto roams the afterlife via platforming abilities to defeat monsters with hack-n-slash skills. The combat is fun button-mashing where you can gain new abilities to aid you in battle. For example, Pluto’s main weapon is swinging their broom around, but you can get upgrades, such as pressing the B button to unleash a spin attack and the like.
The way you earn these upgrades is by collecting trash, which looks an awful lot like coal. Pluto collects trash whenever defeating an enemy, but there are also plenty of trash piles (that resemble rocks) around the world you can smash to bits. Trash acts as the afterlife’s currency, so you can stop by at the bar and trade in the garbage for new abilities and upgrades. For example, you can get a shield that bubbles around you, buy more hearts (you start off with four), and more. You’ll also learn new abilities (for example, dashing or in-air dashing, allowing you to leap further) with each boss you defeat..
Despite the fun combat, the platforming was manageable. I’m not a strong platformer, but the movement and jumps required in CRYPT CUSTODIAN were simple enough that I didn’t feel frustrated even when I missed a jump from time to time. Overall, the controls were fluid and quick to master, making the game too much fun to put down.
The world of the afterlife is vast, too. Luckily, CRYPT CUSTODIAN gives you a handy-dandy map you can look at anytime. The map reveals itself as you move from area to area. If there’s an area you missed, you’ll easily see it on the map and be able to backtrack. I often found myself getting turned around because I kept finding new places to explore that didn’t necessarily move the story forward. Thankfully, there are also plenty of fast-travel points, which is where you also save the game and equip your new upgrades. Each upgrade costs a certain amount of points. You’ll earn these via boss battles and also find some within the world if you explore.
CRYPT CUSTODIAN isn’t a terribly long game, but there’s plenty to keep you busy. There are fun challenges you’ll find during your exploration, such as difficult boss fights, and a boss rush mode gets unlocked once you defeat the first one. Also, upon starting the game, you can set the difficult level to easy, normal, or hard. You can change this at any time during your play through, upping the difficulty to get more of a challenge.
