Corrypt

Designer/Developer: Michael Brough

Platform: PC/MacOSX

Last Played: 09/28/2023

Website: https://smestorp.itch.io/corrypt

Overview:

This is a top down puzzle game that you can explore and find some creatures that request your help, others that share information and one type of creature that sells you magic for mushrooms. As you progress through this game, magic will help you reshape the very ground you walk on and you'll run into more obstacles than just finding the location of mushrooms. The goal is to find 7 Gems and watch how the magic you used wreaks havoc on the world.

Feature Presentation:

This game is all about puzzles and right off the bat you are solving them to proceed immediately. It is a good mental exercise deciphering how you should move things around to progress. The mechanics I want to highlight are:

• Moving Objects: Movable objects attach themselves to the player when they touch and follow the player. To get it to release itself you use a stationary object to block its path as it travels alongside you.

• The Magic: When you use magic it takes a square from one area and anything on it and places it in every other area at the same grid location. (So if you use magic on a square you can walk on in one area if the other area has a wall there it will transform into a walkable square)

Game Dynamics:

There is no linear direction to go in once you pass the first area. You can go in any direction and try to solve the puzzles there. At the point where you’ve collected all that you can, the game goes into a collect and sell pattern. You need magic to collect more mushrooms and you need more mushrooms to buy more magic. As you repeat this pattern you collect gems and keys to explore new areas. I can see that there will be at least 2 types of players:

• The Got to Get it All Player: this person will collect absolutely every object in the game. Unlock every area BEFORE collecting or looking for the final gem.

• The Enough is Enough Player: this type of player is impatient and just wants to move forward and not give it a second thought. This type of player will probably use the least amount of magic to collect all 7 gems and won’t bother collecting mushrooms until its absolutely necessary.

Personal Observations:

• In the beginning you help a few creatures and I thought this was going to be recurring but there were no other NPC’s that wanted help outside the 3 in the beginning. There were only a few more that spoke of warnings about magic..

• You can use magic on the ladder. I discovered later when I got stuck and backtracked to see if I’d missed anything because I couldn’t move forward. You are also able to make the ladder or the magic dealer disappear if you use magic in the square they are located on from a previous level. Be very aware of what square to use your magic on.

• Pressing backspace on the keyboard returns the player to the previous level reverting any changes done to the area you were just in. This helps a lot if I use the magic in the wrong spot. You can backspace all the way to where you started the game.

• As you get deeper into the game skeleton guys appear and I thought I would die if I touched them but they do nothing but follow you when you get within their surroundings and block your movements.They can block you in a corner if you're not careful.

• I got stuck at a point when I used the creature that mimics your movement to open a path. The creature disappeared and I didn’t realize that if they are on one of your magic squares when you transition through areas they teleport to the next area at that location. It was a real puzzle to figure out a way to return the creature because I had no magic.