Crystal Catacombs

This game had promise, but the way jump works ruins the entire experience. You have zero control over your character in mid-air. Despite many people complaining about this, the dev remained stubborn and decided to keep it that way. If that were changed, it might be a fun game, but that won't ever happen. Just play Vagante or Catacomb Kids instead.

Jumping and combat in this game is as responsive as a blind person in a dodgeball tournament.

What an odd game. Beautiful, but buggy. Clever, but a bit confused. The game is a difficult platformer with inventory and limited character development, and procedurally generated dungeons. It has many small bugs (on Linux, anyway) but only very occasionally did they interrupt the game. Crystal Catacombs does a great job of setting a particular, claustrophobic mood. Lovecraftian monsters, an intentionally tight field of vision (made more-so by darkness), and random maps populated by both easy and brutally difficult enemies all add to this vague sense of panic. The music, which I adore, is also unusual (is it modal? Is that right?) and adds to the experience. The beautiful pixel art is the main attraction, but the graphics are not nearly as retro as the gameplay. That's neither an insult nor a compliment. While it's a platformer, the level design and advancement are a lot more true to the spirit of Rogue than glut of roguelike and roguelite cousins. Death is common, especially at first, and sometimes can seem unfair or arbitrary. Again, not really a insult or a compliment, but if you're approaching this with a strictly modern sensibility, I have a feeling you're going to be frustrated. And yes, the controls are difficult. Perhaps slighty more difficult than other similar retro games, but I didn't find them dramatically so, and I don't really think this is necessarily a bad thing. The game is very obviously designed to be difficult. There are a handful of game-mechanic innovations I haven't seen anywhere else, also. As an example, the use of exploding... flower-petals? I don't know that they are supposed to be, but they slowly drift down the screen on later levels, and do a fair amount of damage when hit. Usually easy to avoid, they sometimes make otherwise simple encounters more difficult, and provide an added source of urgency. This is either genius or criminally unpleasant, depending on your expectations. I go with the former, but it's a matter of taste. Everything about this game feels like it was a labor of love. It has flaws, and many debatable aspects, but it's definitely a work of art.

I was really starting to love the game but the Snow/Ice level changed all that. First, my computer is a potato, I'll admit that, but the snow effect coupled with all the enemies made my framerate drop like crazy, I'm talking between 10 and 2 fps. My computer is a potato because I enjoy retro-style games that require little power, and I buy retro-style-games because they can run on my potato... This is very dissapointing. I managed to kill the problematic enemies and continue my game but then I found a game breaking glitch. When using a teleporter, if the character isn't locked in the middle of it, the player loses all control (not even able to open the menu) and waiting for the destroyer doesn't even fix it as they just hover on top of the character. My guess is that the character gets locked in the teleporter by removing all control from the player for an instant. There is ice physics on the teleporter, meanning you activate the teleporter, lose all control, the character slides off the teleporter, game soft locks. I wish the dev would make a quick patch (or someone would make a fan pach) because this game had a lot of potential.

Crystal Catacombs ist ein 2D Action- Plattformer, mit gewissen RPG-Elementen. Das Spiel bedient die Retro-Pixel-8B-Bit Nostalgie-Schublade und will eine Hommage an Klassiker wie Metroid und Castlevania sein. Also grässlich genug sieht die Farbauswahl definitiv aus um mich daran zu erinnern wie erleichtert ich damals über meinen ersten VGA-Monitor war. Das Spiel arbeitet, soweit ich das sehen kann mit weitgehend zufallsgenerierten Level und hat einige interessante Features die es zu einem grundsätzlich recht anständigen Plattformer machen. Allerdings finde ich die Steuerung (mit Tastatur) zu schwammig um wirklich genau "damit zu arbeiten", und ich habe den Eindruck das das Spiel das Balancing der Gegner zu unserem muckeligen Helden nicht vernünftig auf die Kette bekommt. Da ist meiner Ansicht nach noch einiges an Patchbedarf. Grundsätzlich aber ein so räudig aussehender Retro-Plattformer das alle 8-Bit Fans vor Freude sich das Blut aus den Augen wischen und begeistert stundenlang hüpfen, schießen, hüpfen und Schmerztabletten wegen dem Sound einwerfen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqnsM5wjdxc

The game feels really broken

+1

If the controls were fixed this would be a great game. In particular, if you jump and then swing your sword your character continues on its path - you cannot change direction in mid air. This makes the game feel unresponsive and so is hard to recommend.

A pixel-art action roguelite that plays like a metroidvania although it is very flawed. the most glaring flaw is it is repetitive and withholds any cool power ups to make it actually interesting. I played this game for about twenty minutes and did not get a single item drop. Are there items? I assume so. There is an inventory. There is a weapon quick select bar on the top of the screen. But nope. Same crap starting sword with its same crap range for the entire twenty minutes I played it. This is like if one of the older castlevania games refused to put any throwing daggers or axes in any of the candles for the first three levels. Of course the game is going to utterly fail to maintain my interest if it doesn't let me do anything interesting. Twenty minutes is a long time for an action game. I don't think it is too much to ask to do something but a single basic sword sweep during that time and haven't seen anything like that outside of coffee break flash clicker games from the year 2000. I will give it one thing - the enemies have some really neat designs.