Kharon's Crypt - Even Death May Die

A delightful little game. Very reminiscent of classic Zelda games, especially Link's Awakening. The body puppeteering mechanic, while sometimes frustrating when required for puzzle progression, is on whole a very clever mechanic that if possible I would like to see developed further in a future title. Most of the puzzles are smart without being impenetrable, but there are a few that are a bit more unintuitive given the constraints. All in all, I would love for more people that would enjoy this game to pick it up and play it and am excited for this developer's next work.

Oftenly, I take a look at all those modern retro games on the Steam and think "man, those look half-baked" --- and I was fortunately surprised that Kharon's is not one of those. Kharon's may look like just one more Zelda homage, but it's actually a game with very competent design where you will be facing puzzles 90% of its time. If you are one of those guys that love finding secret rooms, hidden chests and collect lore pages, Kharon's will be a joy to play. The combat in this game is intentionaly a bit janky, you need to time attacks and from which direction you will be attacking otherwise enemies will deflect with their weapons and shields. Bosses are enjoyable puzzle battles that need to be defeated with the use of specific items and strategies. To be fair, there are some cons: there's a hefty amount of backtracking because the puzzles are many, the dungeon floors are big, there's no fast travel and many times you need to bring a certain monster body to a room for the solution. As for the difficulty of its puzzles --- here's my score system: 10 - La Mulana - The royal crown. The type of game that is incredibly hard to beat, with a strong chance that you may give up halfway or be forced to use an walkthrough, PLUS it got very hard gameplay, enemies and bosses. MISSABLE ITEMS. 8~9 - Talos Principle, Mist - Properly lectures you how the puzzles work, slowly ramps up and by its end every single one of you Neurons need to be activated. Can be beaten without solving all puzzles, but got a lot of incredibly challenging optional content. 6~7 - Isles of Sea & Sky, old Sierra games like The Dig and the Gabriel Knight Will get you brain working, puzzles are fun challenges and you will eventualy make to the end as long as you don't give. 1~5 - Stuff for normies EX: Fez, Void Stranger, Animal Well, Tunic - Requires you to do stuff OUTSIDE of the game, like conjoined community effort, ARG, decrypt codes/radio signals, change your system clock, open the game in a certain date or hour, visit "secret" websites. Can be beaten in a normal way, but you will miss "the core" of the game SUPER SIKRIT ENDINGS. The sort of game for only people that "get it" and this sort of content is probably obtuse, boring or pointless for many. I rate Kharon's Crypt with the difficulty level ranging from 6 to 7, with some of the late game optional challenges achieving an 8. 90% of its puzzles are of the logical format, the type of "use an item on X", "slide those blocks here and here", "match patterns", etc. There's no much need for abstraction of clues, except for one or two rooms. Just be mindful that some challenging puzzles are obligatory to progress and reach the ending. Kharon's Crypt is a quite a jewel of a game and I'm looking forward for what the Dev got next.

Very interesting game. It's a multi-story dungeon somewhat in the vein of the Eye of the Beholder games, Stone Keep and Legend of Grimrock, though done like a 2D Zelda dungeon. As well as that, you are a ghost that can possess enemies, granting you their powers sort of like in an older retro game called Avenging Spirit. The moody dark castle grabbed me right from the start, with how the audio ramps up when you press the A button to enter the title screen. The whole game is dark and stylish and sets a nice atmosphere. I stopped playing just past halfway. It's the sort of game I want to love more than I actually do. I do recommend it though, perhaps you'll dig it more than I did, it's quite original.