Video Game / Cryptmaster

Long, long ago, four heroes banded together in order to defeat the forces of evil, giving their lives in the process: Joro the warrior, Syn the assassin, Maz the bard, and Nix the sorceress. However, their eternal rest has now been disturbed by a necromancer, who has risen them as his thralls in order to help him escape the crypt his soul has been trapped in. The main problem with this plan is that the heroes have been dead for so long that their skills have faded away, and they must be relearned by exploring the underground world they're trapped in and remembering them one letter at a time.

Cryptmaster is a Typing Game, developed and published by Anapura Games. It was released for PC on May 9, 2024.

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This game uses the following Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Being honest with the toad king when he asks if you've been slaying his children, who are monster encounters throughout his palace, has him say he's perfectly alright with that because he knows it's just the kind of thing adventurers do.
• Anti-Hero: As the heroes recover their memories of how to fight, they also remember what their lives were like, and it's quickly apparent that they were far from heroic despite having defeated a great evil together. For example, Maz was constantly on the run for petty crimes and jilting lovers, and Nix was part of a cult.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The entire game is presented without color.
• Developer's Foresight: As a game built around inputting words to do everything, from conversing to combat, there are a ton of responses that have special interactions.
  • One of the first challenges is to convince a guard you're really human by telling him the last fruit you ate, and answering "tomato" has him make a unique comment about how it counts despite some people thinking it's a vegetable.
  • Telling the toad king that your party's Unholy Matrimony with him is "bigamy" instead of "polygamy" when he's trying to recall the right p-word for marrying four people, because his previous marriages are still technically ongoing, has him say that it is indeed "big of him" and "big of you" to fulfill each other's desires.
• Dungeon Crawling: Most of the game is spent exploring the different levels of the Underground City the crypt was buried underneath, fighting monsters and completing quests in order to progress towards the surface.
• The Fog of Ages: While the heroes not remembering their own abilities can be attributed to their status as undead, the necromancer can't recall the names of basic things like a rat or an arrow without the party having to guess the right answer from context clues.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: There are chests, boxes, receptacles, and so on scattered throughout, and they all contain a single unique item, including things like a rat that you wouldn't want stored. Rather than actually obtaining the items, however, correctly identifying them reveals if any letters from its name are in the words the party are currently trying to remember.
• Loser Deity: Throughout the Underground City are statues dedicated to a goddess of life and rebirth, who is obviously on bad terms with the necromancer, who tasks the party with defiling those statues with vulgar actions. The goddess will appear and speak up every time, but can never do anything more than say some petty insults.
• Necromancer: The game's story is centered around one reviving four heroes to be his thralls, and then acts as the narrator while they accomplish their mission to free his Soul Jar from the crypt it was left in.
• Riddle Me This: Throughout the dungeons are possessed skulls that will reward letters to help the party remember their abilities if they can solve their riddles, most of which are also puns.
• Soul Jar: The Necromancer's soul is bonded to his Soulstone, which the party has to carry with them up to the surface to complete their task. It can also absorb the souls of defeated enemies, as well as caught fish and bugs, in order to cast magic with them.
• Underground City: The party's mission to get the Necromancer to the surface is a challenge because multiple layers of these were built over their crypt in the years since death, with each layer being the home of different species like ratfolk or humans.
• Unholy Matrimony: In order to exit the second level, the Bonehouses, the party needs to prove that they're nobility. They decide to accomplish this by marrying a monstrous toad king that's had over one hundred brides, most of which are monsters, and looks forward to polygamy with undead when asked because he thinks they'll last longer than his past lovers.
• The Unpronounceable: Every character's health, including the party's, is represented by how long their name is. When the party remembers enough of their pasts to level up, they can add any letter in the alphabet to the end of their name, potentially resulting in things like "Mazv" and "Nixj"; the first time it happens, the necromancer will try to pronounce it before deciding he doesn't like his minions rebranding and will continue to call them their default monikers.
• Warp Whistle: Once the party learns the name of an area, they can summon a portal to warp to its entrance by typing it out. Usually you're just given the name when you enter, but one questgiver tasks them with learning the name of four otherwise-inaccessible islands so they can warp there and loot some rare books.

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