Crawl Preview – Magical Mayhem

Since Crawl came out, I have had at least three friends at my house at all times.

came out, I have had at least three friends at my house at all times. They are not allowed to leave. I need to be able to pick up the competitive four player game at any moment, feeling a constant desire to fight over humanity, to increase the power of my monster horde, and to see the forces of darkness rise up. They’re starting to worry about me, though. Look at me with dark circles under their eyes, begging me to unlock the doors and let them free. They’ll be free after the next match, I promise them. I’m lying. They know I am. But part of them, the part that is locked in a weakening, dying vault of meat and sinew, begging to gain new, monstrous life, wants to stay. And so we play on, and we scream, and we howl, and we snatch victory from dead hands and crush life from warm, breathing flesh again. And again. And again.

So Crawl ‘s pretty good, I guess.

For an Early Access game, there are a lot of good times contained in it. It’s a four player dungeon crawl, but only one of the four players gets to fight the monsters and look for treasure. The other three (and you can use bots if your friends pass out from weakness) play as ghosts who can activate traps or monsters. Whichever one kills the living player gets to take their place, in turn fighting the rest of their pals until they hit level ten. Once you do that, you get one chance to fight against the boss monster of the dungeon. Win, and you escape alive; lose, and you’ll be left limping back in the dungeon, praying you stay alive with the sliver of health the game gives you back. You won’t, but you still hope.

There’s a good variety of traps, and most of them can be aimed in some way. You can create a line of spikes, shoot arrows, or launch fireballs in any direction. You typically just have to choose a direction and then let the game fire for a few moments before you can readjust your aim, otherwise it would make for some abnormally hard times for the main character. Other traps will only fire one way, such as the heavy crossbow placement or the sliding spiked ball, but these seem to do more damage. Rooms will randomly have these scattered about, letting players slowly cut down their friends. As you play through matches of the game, different traps will get unlocked for you to use, constantly adding new ways for you to make walking around difficult for whoever’s alive.

But we came here to be monsters. Powerhoof has created a neat stable of creatures to fight with, although that doesn’t seem apparent at the start. The initial monsters aren’t great, but you level them up by picking up globs of blood while you play as ghosts. You can grow your simple worm to an oozing creature that attacks with spears of flesh, and in general turn each of your small, weak monsters into huge beasts that can rip your opponent apart. They all have different attacks as well, letting you do radial spells, area of effect magic, charge, or several other nasty attacks. All you need to do is possess one of the pentagram symbols on the floor in some of the dungeon rooms and you’re in business, since the game locks down the room you’re in once you’ve spawned a monster.

As the main character, you kind of want this to happen. You need to hit at least level ten as the human to leave the dungeon, so you’ll want to be fighting monsters. You’re both getting stronger together, though, so you need to hit that level as fast and easily as you can. That means racing through trap rooms in your search for the next floor of the dungeon, a feat that’s pretty easy since your character moves fast. This also has the added side effect of making it very easy to accidentally walk into traps, beams, and other hazards, so it balances the game well. While a player can quickly leave an empty, useless room, it’s hard to stop when you’re about to stumble into a spike wall.

If you’re the lucky player who kills the living character, you get to take over. This is the biggest part of the game, as it’s a constant push for who can kill the player first. It discourages teamwork on a certain level, since no one wants to let any of the others be the one to kill the player. This means you’re always racing for the best traps over each other, and all of you are tripping over yourselves to kill the current human. It’s a frantic race where everyone is trying to attack and run around at the same time, rushing to traps and monsters as fast as possible. It’s crazy as the main character changes hands over and over, players watching to see who hits level ten first and trying to stop them.

Should you manage to hit that level and find the escape door, you have to fight a boss to get through. This means surviving an onslaught against a creature with several attacks, able to fling trapping bubbles, streams of damaging blood, and explosive charges all at once. Did I mention that the ghosts can also summon small blobs if they want, basically turning the screen into a giant death trap. The boss also requires you to bounce the explosives back at it, so not only are you avoiding all of this stuff, but you also have to work a boss gimmick. It’s insane, and more often than not you’ll be bounced back out, mostly dead, rather than win. If the players lose against the boss three times, the game ends and victory is declared for the current ghosts.

Fighting over humanity is a lot of fun as everyone rushes to do everything. The player is constantly scrambling around looking for gold and monster blood to buy better equipment, while the ghosts are always looking for new traps to whittle the player down, and everyone is fighting to get that last hit in to take over. It’s all very fast as your roles constantly change, so the constant need to rush to do whatever you’re trying to accomplish never lets up. The fast pace makes it extremely hard to put down, as is the speed in which defeat and victory can change hands. The constant influx of new weapons, tools, monsters, and traps keeps the experience from ever getting tired, as the stakes rise for both sides. Again, bear in mind this is a game in Early Access.

All of your abilities can be a little daunting at first if you don’t have enough people around. You can add bots to the match if you don’t have enough players, as the game loses some of its charm when less than four are playing. The rush of four people running all over the screen is very important to this game’s feel. That being said, bots will know which things are traps and how to interact with certain items before you get a chance to figure them out, so you may feel that you don’t have time to figure things out. It’s best to start out with four players to learn everything together, although the bots will show you how things work and what to look for in their own way. I didn’t know you could exchange monster blood for gold until I saw a bot do it, after all. Most things are quite simple to learn to interact with, though, so it’s not even close to a big issue.

The pixel art graphics are something to see. The game goes for a blockier look, which might not look as sharp as some games, but it works well here. Larger monsters have been given a more loving amount of detail, making for some nice tentacle and liquid effects, changing from blocky, simple art to a surprising fluidity within one attack. The rest of the dungeon is simple, dark, and straightforward, with traps and summon circles standing out in the simplicity. On top of that, there are some interesting glitching effects where the graphics screw up on purpose, which gives it this charming feel. It’s like the monstrosities in the game are creeping out of it, giving it a horror feel that goes along with the weird monsters that inhabit Crawl .

The sound design is simple, with only a few basic tracks playing along with the game. It was hard to notice them among the visual effects of combat, the spraying blood, and the constant smacking sounds of weapons slamming in monsters and humans alike. The hits have some audio weight to them, just enough that you know you hit someone and you feel it through the sound. It’s satisfying, and is useful to know when you’re buried under several rushing dragons. The rest of the soundtrack is simple chiptune goodness, although you’ll have to listen closely to pick up on it over the sound and flare of combat.

Crawl is a fantastic multiplayer game for four people. I’m not normally competitive in multiplayer, but when someone steals your life force by biting you with a snake, you have to answer back. You have to keep fighting, and you hurry to the next trap or monster circle you can find, determined to get your body back. It’s got a simple control scheme where you’re just hitting things, getting stronger, and trying to be the first to finish. It’s straightforward, fast, and deeply competitive. If you’ve ever needed a reason to see four people crowd in tight around a single keyboard without hearing them voice a complaint, pick up Crawl . Just don’t be surprised when you never stop playing it. As good as it is in Early Access, I’m almost afraid of how much fun the full version will be.

Sorry, friends. Guess you’re not going home any time soon.

Crawl is available for $9.99 on Steam Early Accessand from the Developer’s Site.