I'll happily be Coin Crypt's first Metacritic user reviewer. Summary verdict: This game is a good value. I like to use the $1 per hour of entertainment benchmark--at just $10 on Steam, this game has EASILY surpassed this mark for me. I've already put 20 or so hours into it, and may put in at least another 20 before I'm ready to move on.
The Pros: This game has a fun feel, with brightI'll happily be Coin Crypt's first Metacritic user reviewer. Summary verdict: This game is a good value. I like to use the $1 per hour of entertainment benchmark--at just $10 on Steam, this game has EASILY surpassed this mark for me. I've already put 20 or so hours into it, and may put in at least another 20 before I'm ready to move on.
The Pros: This game has a fun feel, with bright colors, neat music, and several subtle witty jokes. The difficulty is not quite as brutal as in other Roguelikes, and you feel like you make measured progress every run. The game does an excellent job of tracking your achievements while also informing you of several ways you could improve or play differently to get a different experience.
The game is really cleverly designed and is surprisingly complex. Each new run will present a substantially different set of decisions to the player, and there are really a lot of ways to play successfully. For the most part, the game is well-balanced, and it doesn't rely heavily on contrived or "cheap" ways to raise the difficulty level. Pretty much every action has pros and cons that the player can choose to weigh carefully--or not--before acting.
The pace of the game is quick by design. The instanced battles are especially brisk, almost nerve-rackingly so. But once you get familiar with the system (and with the enemies and coins), they become very engaging, and, perhaps surprisingly, not tedious at all. The game does a fairly good job of not throwing too much at you too quickly, giving you a chance to keep up. Dying in battle is a bummer, but you can be back into the action in moments, so the flow of play stays high.
One last pro I really want to emphasize is that you are given a remarkable number of opportunities to customize each run you undertake. You can pick any one of maybe two dozen classes, each with a very different play style, you can donate coins to any one of six different deities who will bless you with vastly different coins, you can choose several blessings (and their accompanying curses!) from ghosts, you can choose which path to take and which areas to unlock, and you can choose from maybe two dozen items you can buy--or not--from shops with your precious coins. Therein lies the true genius of Coin Crypt--your loot is your money is your health is your weapon. Every single action--even every single turn in battle--has consequences because it uses up your coins. It's really impressive how well-balanced and rich an experience the developers have created here.
The cons: To be sure, Coin Crypt is not perfect, despite the praise I've given it so far. However, most of my gripes with the game actually relate more to what I'd like to see the game ADD rather than CHANGE. In essence, I think the core of Coin Crypt is very solid but that a few tweaks could raise it close to casual game perfection.
The first notable absence is a tutorial. The mechanics of the game are disorienting at first to say the least, especially those of battle, and so even a short tutorial could make a world of difference. Second, enemy and encounter diversity in the first few levels should probably be increased slightly--you end up seeing these levels a lot more often than later ones, and some added variety would help keep things interesting. I should note that, overall, Coin Crypt packs a lot of variety; some front-loading of this variety might not go amiss though.
Some other tweaks that come to mind are as follows: First, The fast pacing of the game is usually nice, but it can be frustrating in some ways. I think this is a homage to the game's Rougelike ancestors. The biggest offender is the "Level time limit." I think it's a fair mechanic, but a way to actually visualize the time limit would be good. That way, it would become clear what actions do and do not pause the clock. Especially in later levels, I tend to spend a lot of time trying to become more familiar with what my new coins do (a crucial element in the late-game), and that is stressful when the clock is ticking.
Second, some of the classes seem to be less playable than others. The Demon, for example, is very powerful (and fun to play as) whereas the Thief can be downright demoralizing to be. Most classes do appear viable, but that doesn't mean that they're all fun to take out on a run. Likewise, some (not most) of the ghost perk/curse combos really seem poorly balanced to the point that I can't fathom a class they would benefit, but that might be a lack of imagination on my end. Lastly, the deity mechanic seems harder to pick up than others in the game. It's another area where a tutorial could really benefit early players.
To summarize, I think the core of the game is incredibly novel and witty, especially for a budget Indie game, and I think there is a ton of room for this game to grow as well. I don't hesitate to recommend Coin Crypt to anyone with an itch for a casual RPG/Rougelike experience.… Expand
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