Crypt Custodian Review

Crypt Custodian sounds like the name of a hardcore ARPG, but it’s actually an adorable metroidvania starring my favorite video game cat from 2024. It’s a shame he had to die.

Pluto fell over the edge and put it out. It’s a sudden and unpleasant death, but there’s a silver lining: since he spent his life being a nice cat to loving owners, he shouldn’t have any trouble getting into the Palace, where good, dead animals go when they die.

Unfortunately, Pluto destroys a few things during his interview in the afterlife, so the capricious Palace Guardian Kendra decides that he is not allowed in after all. Instead of an eternity of idyll, Pluto ends up as a janitor at the Palace doors. Of course, this is not a good outcome. However, it turns out that the other animals have also unfairly fallen foul of Kendra, and soon a plot emerges to break out of the Palace walls and escape to… where?

Crypt Custodian is a game by Kyle Thompson, whose previous works include Islets AND Sheep. Both are light-hearted animal action metroidvanias, and all have a distinctive art style. The creature designs borrow heavily from ’30s and ’40s cartoons, but Thompson doesn’t seem interested in cliched nostalgia. The animations have a newfangled fluidity that makes them feel less period-specific than, say, Cuphead. Like Thompson’s earlier games, Crypt Custodian is a pretty thing in action. The crisp simplicity of the graphics is a perfect match for the precision-oriented action.

While Islets and Sheepo were both side-scrollers, Crypt Custodian opts for a top-down view, bringing it closer to something like Hyper Light Drifter or Death’s Door (it also shares the latter’s slightly biting sense of humor). It’s significantly easier than either of them, or at least its difficulty curve has a much gentler gradient.

Pluto wields a humble broomstick that acts as a sword. Combat remains straightforward throughout the game, but the difficulty lies in its bullet hell traps. Fights rely less on fancy attacks and more on balletic maneuvering between often erratic projectiles, whether it’s a quick, frame-heavy dodge or a careful push through a brawl. In true Hollow Knight fashion, the controls are tuned tightly enough that broomstick combat, while basic, remains vigorous and fun for over 20 hours.

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The variety comes from the array of powers Pluto collects throughout his adventure, and there’s not just one level of upgrades, but three. There are the usual metroidvania progression abilities, including a spirit double of Pluto for solving puzzles and a broomstick projectile (called a “broomerang”) that can activate distant switches. Finally, there’s an upgrade that lets Pluto teleport to wherever he can throw his broomerang, and another that lets him dig tunnels into the ground.

There are also some minor upgrades tied to a points system, meaning the more upgrade points you collect in the world, the more upgrades you can apply at once. These range from basic health and attack buffs to more inventive options like one that makes enemies explode upon death. There are also special attacks thrown into the mix that can only be activated one at a time and are subject to cooldowns. I stuck to the brief moment of invincibility granted by the Spirit Shield, but there are a number of offensive attacks like land mines and homing missiles.

This two-tiered system, while unnecessarily confusing, seems particularly essential in boss fights. While I found the Crypt Custodian mostly unstressful, some bosses required me to carefully optimize my “composition,” although I generally didn’t have to think much during normal moment-to-moment traversal. Bosses fall back on the venerable pattern recognition, and their mechanical familiarity is offset by a whimsical spectacle.

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Charm is, ultimately, something that Crypt Custodian leans heavily into. While the map is huge, most areas are just flat paths littered with obstacles, with only a color scheme and a vague, indistinct skybox to differentiate them. Ultimately, it makes the hard-fought discovery of a novel area feel less exhilarating than it usually does in this type of game.

Yes, it does get repetitive at times, especially when I realize that I can simply avoid most enemies rather than fight them.

On the other hand, I loved the modesty of Crypt Custodian, which is a strange thing to love in a video game. Let me explain: for a long time, I expected Crypt Custodian to surprise me with some amazing novel power or crazy hidden depth. It never materialized. Eventually, I realized that in addition to being a mechanically impeccable video game, it was also a cold thing that one person made with the lend a hand of his brother (Eric Thompson co-composes the Boards of Canada-style soundtrack). While it doesn’t intrigue on the same level, it shares an intimacy with another indie, self-made Animal Well. It has a singular vision that would only be blurred if it were in different hands.

In a year that feels near-apocalyptic for the industry, it’s good to be reminded that a video game can simply be a weird product created by one person for both fun and profit.