There are a lot of dungeon crawlers out there, but one thing that they often have in common is that they’re enjoyable. THIS IS SO INACCURATE! If you were to be thrown into a dungeon and forced to fight your way out while starving, tired, and scared, the last thing you’d do is enjoy working your way through escaping it. Dungeons are dirty, smelly, dark, gross places full of danger, traps, and monsters around every corner. Sure there’s loot, but it’s got to be some gnarly, used, gross loot if you’re finding it inside some nasty dungeon, right?
In this sense, Crimson Keep is probably the truest dungeon crawler I’ve ever played. The game features dark caverns, enemies that are sometimes difficult to see and sneak up on you, yet somehow always know when you’re nearby, and combat that’s about as fun as you’d expect out of a starving person dropped into a dungeon with no way out except by powering through the horrors within.
I went into the game expecting to get some kind of story, but as I typically play games without audio there was none to be found at all. There’s a skippable cutscene before the game that does actually tell a story about a woman who somehow corrupts a king, takes over the kingdom, and causes it sink into the ground where it becomes her own private domain, the titular Crimson Keep. It doesn’t tell you whether you’re headed into this dungeon to try to free it from her evil or to take over and be even more evil yourself, but considering how little equipment you go into the caves with I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some lottery where they throw a random “winner” in as some form of sacrifice. This one cutscene is also very hard to hear, at least on the Switch, to the extent that if you don’t have headphones on and you’re not playing with it docked you’ll either have to put your ear up to the console to hear it or watch it without really hearing what’s being said.
The combat in the game is very straightforward and mostly standard: you can use either a melee or limited-use ranged weapon to attack enemies, and you can have a shield in the other hand to protect against attacks with the caveat that it may break at any given time. Leveling up grants you new abilities, and there are various slots for armor pieces. Your ability has limited uses, but in a neat twist you recharge it by killing enemies. These abilities are typically VERY strong, so using them properly (and with good aim!) is a big part of the game. You also have the ability to dash a short distance with a button press, which is good because your attacks basically lock you in place temporarily. All of this adds up to melee combat being a series of getting close to an enemy, watching their attack animation, dashing in, attacking, then dashing away again to repeat the whole cycle before getting hit. In the long run this is far more tedious than exciting, and it just wasn’t fun.
In addition to the procedurally generated layouts of each area, you get to choose between three different character classes at the beginning of each level. The berserker starts with a rather nifty hatchet, while the witch starts with a wand. The wand has a limit of 25 uses, although both characters also get a sword in the little tutorial area before the first level anyway. There’s a third class, the drifter, which is essentially hard mode since you start off with nothing (not even the health potion the other two get, although you do get to pick up the sword the other characters get in the tutorial area) and you have less health as well. You’re also cursed with not getting experience points, which means no level ups, which means no OP abilities.
It took me a few tries to realize how to be a bit successful with the combat, and I was really excited when I finally made it to the second level for the first time. Like all the other aspects of the game, that excitement turned to disappointment when the loading screen lasted for over 3 minutes with no sign of progression. After a quick restart of the system and game I managed to load my progress… right up to the never-ending loading screen once more. I guess the only thing more frightening than surviving a horrific dungeon is dying on the drop between floors and having that fact hidden by an endless loading screen. Maybe that’s what hell is for these characters, a nonstop loading screen, just watching the skull spin around for all of eternity, slowing going mad.
When it comes to a dungeon-crawling roguelike, there are three things I look for: solid combat, a reason to keep playing, and loot that’s varied, balanced, and fun to collect. Sadly Crimson Keep didn’t satisfy any of these for me. I was also very disappointed that the game had no captions at all… This meant that all of the game’s voiced story is nonexistent if you have the audio off or are deaf. Huge first-person roguelike fans that have exhausted all the other choices on Switch and want something portable may still want to try it out, but I’d definitely wait for a sale. Maybe with enough time the game becomes fun, and there are abilities and perks to unlock by playing (defeating x bosses as a particular class, for example). It was just too much of a slog for me to keep giving it more opportunities when other games exist.
Crimson Keep is available on Nintendo Switch (reviewed) and Steam (Windows).
A review code was provided for this review.