Defend your Crypt Demo

There’s something about dark dungeons that attracts adventurers and heroes, although you’d think they would be busier with actually helping people. Treasure is more important, on the other hand, because all that gold and powerful weapons can then be used to save innocent lives, probably. Hence, it’s difficult for villains and wicked wizards to hide their loot.

Defend your Crypt is an arcade strategy game that presents the story from a different perspective, since it puts you in the role of the dungeon master instead. It’s obviously not a new idea, but the concept is presented in a simple, yet addictive package. Thus, your job is to place traps and activate them at the right moment, in order to catch as many thieves as possible.

Each trap costs a certain amount of skulls - the official bad guy exchange currency -, however, so you have to synchronize your slayings as efficiently as possible. Some of them can take out multiple adventurers at the same time, while others have very long reset timers. It’s also mandatory that you keep an eye on as many of them as possible at the same time, because the NPCs spawn in a neat conga line.

The game tries to make you feel bad every now and again, given the fact that some thieves appear to display some basic emotions. Judging by the emojis that float around them, the scoundrels can oscillate between scared, sad or even happy, depending on how well you are slaughtering their comrades. On the other hand, these emotions have no impact on the gameplay, unless your sense of mercy kicks in for some reason.

It’s pretty difficult to empathize with the characters, however, regardless of how sorry you might be feeling about impaling them. This is because the retro graphics depict a thief as just a handful of colorful pixels, so it’s easy to forget that they are meant to represent humans. It’s all in good fun, since everyone involved seems to be aware of the risks.

All things being equal, Defend your Crypt has the tendency to become repetitive after a while, even if there seem to be plenty of different traps to toy with. The levels all appear to look the same texture-wise, on the other hand, which might take its toll on your eyes.