Kharon's Crypt Demo

As unlikely as it may sound, there is still a lot of untapped potential in every video game genre out there, regardless of whether we are talking about RPGs, match-three flicks or first-person shooters. However, it’s important for the developers to really strive to come up with new ideas, because as we can see nowadays, it’s a lot easier to just copy-paste mechanics onto something with a different name.

Kharon's Crypt is a very intriguing roguelike game with puzzle elements and a bit of role-playing as well, in which you play the role of Death itself as it tries to escape from a trap and get revenge on the one who sent it there. The mechanics appear fairly straightforward for the genre at first, but there are a few new concepts that make the adventure feel much more original and exciting.

To begin with, you play as Kharon, an entity that holds tremendous powers. Thus, you are no longer the nameless hero who saves the world, which is a nice change right off the bat. Kharon has a few neat skills up his sleeve too, such as the ability to possess bodies or become ethereal and pass through solid objects with ease. All of these abilities must be used to solve puzzles and explore the crypt.

The interesting part about being able to possess bodies is that every type of enemy has some sort of unique skill you might need in order to overcome certain obstacles. Thus, Kharon does not have any hands, but he can interact with objects by possessing skeletons and using their hands instead. There are many such riddles along the way, which is a nice change from the usual hack & slash mechanics seen in a dungeon crawler.

As far as the graphics are concerned, the retro style is very engaging, especially since the whole thing is designed to look like an old Gameboy title. However, the pixelated artwork is very expressive, so you do not have to worry about getting bored of the repetitive backgrounds along the way. Even the music is in tune with the retro approach, so it truly feels like a blast from the past.

In the end, Kharon's Crypt may look like a regular dungeon crawler at first, but it turns out to be much more enjoyable than its competitors. It also features many interesting new concepts for you to toy with, which is why the developers deserve your support with their Kickstarter campaign.