“Gather your friends around the television set” is about to take on a whole new meaning with Crawl. Set in a disgustingly dank dungeon filled with monsters and traps, Crawl is a game changer in many ways. No, you are not teaming up with your buddies to make it out alive, it’s quite the opposite. At the beginning of Crawl, you and up to three friends (or CPU A.I.) fight to the death. The last man standing starts progressing through the dungeon. Everyone else controls their spirits, who can possess traps, items and monsters to try and kill the surviving human. The human character has weapons and skills at his disposal to destroy some of the hazards and kill monsters, but he will eventually fall in battle. Whichever spirit landed the killing blow now regains their humanity and continues the journey through the dungeon. This process continues through many areas until you are levelled enough to face the final boss. Fail to defeat the boss after three tries and it’s game over. The appeal is that all this takes roughly 30 minutes to complete. The areas never stay the same either thanks to randomly generated level placement. The game is meant to be bite sized, frantic and fun.

 

 

 

The RPG mechanics in Crawl add much welcome depth to the already unique gameplay. As the surviving human kills monsters, he gains XP which will automatically cause him to level up and become more powerful. The spirits also gain experience, called Wrath, which is used to upgrade possess-able monsters in between levels. One typical monster can go through about 4 or 5 upgrades until he is maxed out and far more dangerous than before. Developer Powerhoof touts over 60 unique playable monsters and aside from what you’d expect there are some grotesque beings to commandeer! The ones I controlled were unique, ranging from: a skeleton with flaming arrows, a poisonous mushroom and even a laser-shooting Cyclops.

While playing, your character also collects coins to use at the shop in each level. This is a chance to swap items for ones with different stats, purchase new combat skills and artefacts that might give you stat boosts, immunity or special traits. Finding the right combination if weapons and items is important depending on your current goal. Levelling up might be more suited to melee attacks and dodging while the boss fight relies more on ranged attacks. Using new weapons and unlocking new skills is fun and helps keep the combat fresh.

 

 

 

Graphically, Crawl has an old-school pixel look, almost Atari-like. This has become a bit of a trend lately, but Crawl really nails the retro theme with high quality models. I was pleasantly surprised to hear voice narration. Cutscenes during the intro and before the boss fights were beautiful as well. The controls are very simple, with the one button mapped for regular attacks, and another for special attacks. After a few uses there will be a slight cooldown indicated by a red circle the player, which limits spamming. I did find it a bit easy to get discombobulated while playing as the spirit. Oftentimes, the player moves quickly from room to room and you feel as though you can’t catch up.

Crawl takes a unique 1v3 gameplay idea and fleshes it out with gorgeous pixel art. While the game does support single player with A.I. opponents, the luster quickly wears off after a few playthroughs. Those looking for a fun party game would benefit from having Crawl in their collection. I can see people going back to Crawl when they have the number of local buddies to properly enjoy it. Players looking for more of a solo experience should keep on crawling to the next dungeon.

 

Overall Score - 7/10

 

Written by Jordan650 | Xbox: Jordan650 | Twitter: @Jordan650

 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review

 

You can purchase Crawl on the Xbox Store Here

 

Release Date - Tuesday‎, ‎April‎ ‎11‎, ‎2017

Price - $14.99

Download Size - 425.37 MB

 

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