Review - Crypt Custodian
"Us bad ghosts are more fun anyway"
Crypt Custodian
August 27, 2024 - Top Hat Studios / Kyle Thompson
Metroidvania / Kyle Thompson
Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series Consoles, PC
After passing away, a cat named Pluto finds himself in the afterlife and is punished by being tasked to clean up trash outside the palace. Pluto meets various other animal ghosts as he explores and battles enemies and creatures.
Characters, World, and Presentation
Crypt Custodian begins as you, a cat named Pluto, find yourself in the afterlife following your passing. You’re told to see Kendra, a bullfrog who is the caretaker, who decides who gets to enter the palace or be banished to the outside to clean trash forever. When you make your way to Kendra, it becomes apparent how strict she is, and you’re banished with the so-called bad ghosts! From there, the game plays like a typical Metroidvania, with areas that you can explore more as you gain more special power-ups. However, there’s a cast of characters along the way you meet, each with their own story on how they led their lives and the longing to enter a magic mirror in the palace that lets you visit the mortal world for a little bit.
At its heart, this is a story about friendship, as you have to meet ten friends to reach your main objective and break into Kendra’s palace. But it’s not just about friendship; it's also about embracing marginalized animals that have been labeled as “bad” and are there to pick up trash. The trash analogy in the game fits because, at its core, you’re looking at these so-called bad ghosts and are told to clean up the trash. But Pluto decided to befriend them, solving some of their issues along the way. This is where the game’s story truly shines, and the subtle theme of what is considered trash versus embracing all these different characters. There’s a potentially intense discussion to be had here regarding an overbearing caretaker's views on “bad people” and their efforts to keep them out, which completely misses the point of the palace they guard. This can lead to philosophical and even spiritual discussions on hypocritical power.
The world takes you from dreary wetlands to cellars to shrines to towers in the sky, and it does it with a surprisingly cozy feeling. This is a Metroidvania, and you can choose to bump up the difficulty, but there are cozy game aesthetics here that fit the core story and theme around friendship. The presentation works well, mixing the action you expect in the genre with a calming feeling as you explore.
Gameplay, Design, and Sound
This is a Metroidvania. You explore areas, expand the map, collect power-ups, learn new lore, and then backtrack to past areas to unlock new parts and get access to more power-ups. As I’ve said a million times, I love this genre, and I was taken aback because I didn’t realize that’s what this game was. I was expecting something close to it, but nope, this is a full-blown Metroidvania title. The primary weapon is your broom, which you can get special attacks that you can equip in spirit shrines, each allocated by the number of upgrade points you get along the way. You’ll also expand how you can traverse the world, similar to 2D Metroid titles, which open up past areas to reveal more.
That discovery feeling that the best games in the genre have, that’s here, and it does it just as well as the best. It helps a lot that some of the weaker aspects of the genre are tackled. Don’t feel like backtracking with that new upgrade you got, teleport across spirit shrines. If you want to find all the collectibles but don’t want to read a guide or waste time searching, you can pay for markers to indicate where interesting objects are located. I love this genre, but those small things were a big help and took out some of the more frustrating aspects of the genre.
As mentioned before, the friends you make along the way are the real heart of this game. Each friend is located in their area of the map, and you can find secret photos that explain their life story from start to end, including how they passed away. The photos are optional, but I went ahead and searched for them all because I got invested in learning about these animals. You can also look for spirit animals, a total of twenty, who are lost across the world and need to be reunited with their mom. CD Jukeboxes are also a fun collectible to find, which you can use in a bar’s jukebox to enjoy the sounds of the game.
Enemy variety and boss fights are solid. The boss fights feel different, which I really liked, and feel epic. The final boss was a bit disappointing, but all the bosses, for the most part, are the kind of fights you like in the genre. There are a few puzzle areas that require you to use your brain, such as figuring out how to reach a destination quickly, understanding when to flip a switch, or bouncing a metal ball around an area in the right way to trigger a gate opening. These aren’t hard, but do take using your brain as you progress closer to the end.
The soundtrack is one of those “vibes” type of soundtracks, it’s more about the atmosphere and feeling rather than separate scores that feel different. It’s not bad by any means, but it does become a little repetitive and suits the cozy aesthetic the game aims for. The art direction goes for a hand-drawn storybook look that all fits together really well. The world, characters, and architecture all blend to form a cohesive, vibrant, and unique world with a distinct personality, color, and character. It’s that specific indie-style that I love.
Negatives
I don’t have many negatives for this one, aside from two things that became a bit annoying at times down the stretch. The main negative is the movement of Pluto. He moves pretty slow for the genre, and it did get to a point where I was constantly dashing to traverse. A minor issue, but it became annoying at times towards the end of the stretch.
The other negative aspect that bothered me was the map. The map isn’t bad and they even show you hints of rooms and areas you may have missed, but as the map gets bigger and bigger as you play, the cursor moves real slow across it and that got annoying towards the end as I was trying to hop to other areas to get 100 percent.
ESSENTIAL - recommend - okay - don’t recommend
Crypt Custodian is best described as a Metroidvania with a lot of heart. It has all the best parts of a genre I love, but mixes with a calming feel and a story about friendship. The gameplay loop and exploration is damn good, but it’s those small moments when you help out the animal ghosts in the world that give you satisfaction. The themes and analogies to the trash you pick up along the way and what is labeled as “bad” by an overbearing caretaker who looks away from the real point of all of this can hit pretty hard when you stop and think about it from either a philosophical or even spiritual standpoint. It all comes to an end, with an ending that had me tear up a little as the credits rolled—a very special game.
Be Nice to All
Thanks for your review on this. I am definitely sold. I was interested before but this sound like a must play in the metroidvania genre.