Review: CRYPTARK

The hyperproduction of independent developer games has many beneficial effects on the scene as a whole, but also an unfortunate consequence in the form of individual invisibility in the hordes of titles appearing on a daily basis. It's always happening that more than solid games never get out of the fog and reach the eyes of the audience, and the delusion of incompetence sometimes really acts unfairly. CRYPTARK is a game that ten years ago, in the midst of a cold war between the PC and the console when the good games were relatively small, was unconsciously raised to heaven and mentioned at every step. In today's flooded climate, however, only one good thing is buried in the depths of the " new releases " menu on Steam, partly visible on the day of the exit, but convinced that it will be covered tomorrow and the show tomorrow.

CRYPTARK is harsh but fair roguelike shooter that combines bullet-hell, twin stick 2D action RPG progression goods and tactical approach to solving levels. You are the leader/operator of a small enterprise for the manipulation of space waste that receives a lucrative contract for "processing" cemeteries of abandoned ships in order to extract technology and artifacts. The ultimate goal of your excursion into ancient worms full of defensive systems that work as a lubricant is to break into the center of the cemetery and infiltrate the titled CRYPTARK frogshell for the robbery of technological goods. To locate it, you must first clean five progressively heavier, procedurally generated wrecks and earn enough money for the equipment needed for the final.


CRYPTARK is a game where everything revolves around steam. Setting up a robotic suit for infiltration into wrecks by adding weapons, equipment, and "consumables" requires money that you earn by doing primary and secondary tasks. In most cases, the balance between money spent on equipment and money earned will be very tight, leaving you no room for too many mistakes in the campaign. Given that the game is conceived as an action roguelike, each defeat, that is, the loss of the only life you have (in each individual mission), involves permanently thrown money. If you go to the minus, the campaign is over and you have to start a new one, from scratch. The margin for error in the game is minimal because you have a luft for one or two incomplete missions, possibly three if you've worked in a previous way in a particularly good way and earned a high-cash cash.

When deciding what you are wearing in a mission and selecting one of the offered wrecks and slopes, it's time for action. Every abandoned boat is covered with droplets, turrets and various systems for self-protection and elimination of intruders, so that from the first second you get into a boiling soup of air and bullets that is not easy to survive. The control system is a classic twin-stick template in which the left thumbstickManeuver the controller, and you aim at the right target and shoot. If you are a masochist who sleeps on a nail and eats a glass wool, you can try to play with the keyboard and the mouse, but I really do not recommend it to you. The goal of each mission is to destroy the central computer, which you must first break the shield generator that is most often located on the other end of the ship. There are other systems that make you hair-like, like a dispenser fighting trooper, a repair center that will reconstruct every destroyed system, alarm center, torn cannon controller, deck lock system in a minute ... They all bother you in their own way, but you do not have time to play a particularly thorough approach to their purging due to the time limit which hangs over your head (5-9 minutes). If you exceed it, you will pay massive penalties, but every second you save means a cash bonus. In each boat, you also have several sub-stations with new weapons and equipment schemes that become available in the next mission. The initial arsenal is relatively rich, but dozens of new ballistic and energy shooters, such or such shields, mine-throwers, missiles and grenades and other utilities help to fully match combat tactics to their own.


The slip on each wreck must, therefore, be carefully planned, both in terms of the path to move in its depth and in the order of destruction of the system and the use of appropriate weapons and equipment (which, too, should not cost more than you will earn in a mission). At first sight, CRYPTARK seems to be absolutely merciless, but although it will appear to you in the first minutes that you do not have any chance to clean at least one central ship, the game will quickly get into your fingers and everything will become dramatically easier. Success will largely depend on finding a combination of weapons and hardware to help you "lie" and practice while your movement, targeting, and shooting do not become a different nature.



After two years of transparent development in Steam's early access program, the constant updates that have bubbled the bubble challenge to perfection and the huge effort to get all the elements of the game eared and waiting to work as lubricated, CRYPTARK bought just a few Thousands of people on the PC.


Rate:8/10