2.5/5 ★ – Madsines's review of Crypt Custodian.

I really wanted to like this but I just didn't have fun with Crypt Custodian. The art style is very nice, movement feels snappy and precise and the writing and overall tone of the game is extremely charming, but it's just not very fun to play. My biggest gripe is the map. It's convoluted, confusing and just not clear where you're supposed to be going most of the time. Even with the ability to use currency to mark the location on your map, I just found myself fumbling around hitting dead end upon dead end on the map which got very frustrating, and ultimately I felt my time was not being respected. There's only so many times I can look for an unexplored segment on the map, spend 10 minutes following it only to hit a dead end and do the same thing all over again. There's also no way to heal in this game, leading to numerous situations where you'd be down to your last couple of hit points, and you'd just end up killing yourself or warping back to the save point because there was no point progressing further when you're low on health and so vulnerable. It just added to the tedium of the game. Some sort of self-healing mechanic or health drops from enemies would've gone a long way here. Maybe I'll go back to this one day but for the moment, if you're after a good Metroidvania I'd recommend Nine Sols, Lost Crown or even the developer's previous game Islets which I enjoyed far more than this.