The Descent

Hey! I just finished Cryptis. The pixel art is really good and so is the general mood of the game. I really feel the DOOM vibe but it’s also kinda mystical too. I really like it. However I did find quite a few issues that I thought would be nice to report so here I am.

• The purple arrows are a little hard to see when they are heading towards you. Maybe you could make them glow harder or add a particle effect or something around them to make them more visible.
• Since the game is fast paced, in my first playthroughs I didn’t really take my eyes off the center of the screen. I died quite a few times without even noticing my health was low. I quickly took the habit of checking the left down corner of the screen but it’s a bit distracting. Plus, even though i like the health bar’s look, it’s not really readable. It might be better to have a regular health bar at the center of the x axis of the screen. Then, the player’s eyes would have to travel a much shorter distance to see how much health they’ve got left. A simple health bar is also easier to read than text or a cross shaped one. Lastly on that matter, if I didn’t always notice that my health was low, it might be because the “player hurt” sfx and vfx are too subtle. I didn’t even notice the screen turned grey before the second level.
• Even though the sound design is quite good, it is sorely lacking in bass. I don’t really feel the music and the sfx. It’s like I’m hearing it from quite far away. I WANNA FEEL IT TREMBLE MUAHAHAHAHA😈
• I got stuck against to a wall like 5 times in my 2 hours of gameplay because I was surrounded by enemies and I couldn’t pass until I had killed all of them. I had the same problem in my own game for a pretty long time and the solution that worked for me was activating physics on enemies’ character movement and making the player about 3 to 5 times heavier than them so he could push them around by simply walking on past them.
• Sometimes, you die without knowing why. It would really make the game seem more fair if you made a customized death screen for every way the player could die. It seems pretty time consuming said like that but you could do that pretty simply by replacing the “game over” by some custom phrases that you choose from an enum depending on the way the player died. Or maybe you could color the “game over” with the color of enemy that killed the player, like in Zelda BOTW when you die by elemental dammge. But I’m not really sure if it would fit, I’m just spitting out some ideas… it’s worth trying though. Just don’t make Cryptis feel like a battle royale please😂
• Also, the easter eggs are really cool, it would be even better if they were destructible with some particle effect an stuff.
• There are also some camera clipping issues, you should double check that the rocks’ meshes are entirely inside their collision shapes.
• In the arena with square platforms, after dying the first time there, the music stopped. I tried do kill myself to make it play again but it didn’t until the final boss.
• The boss is more frustrating than challenging. He just follows you around like a dog and strikes you in the back. The only way to deal him damage is to shoot at him while walking backwords. Sure you can also bunny hop to get far from him but you risk just falling off a cliff. The last strategy I came up with was just getting on the opposite side of a hole and shoot him while trying to stay on the opposite side of that hole. Only problem, it’s not fun. It’s clearly not a fair fight. You should make him go slower and stop attacking when the player isn’t looking and is already dealing with other enemies. It’s not important if the combat is fair or not. The important is FEEL like it’s fair. And right now it just seems unmanageable as soon as he calls the other enemies. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even kill half of them. And when I tried easy mode, I defeated first try. Didn’t feel rewarding at all. It feels like you put a souls boss in a doom-like. I know I am pretty harsh about this boss fight but it did ruin an otherwise very good experience. You have to fix it.

Again, Cryptis is a really cool game. Sorry if I’m being a bit too direct with my feedback but I really want to help you make it better.

Have a nice journey of game development :)