Game review 26 January 2016, 09:42

author: Christopher Mysiak

Crudelis review – how many choices can you make in 60 minutes?

Crudelis is an independent Polish game which is advertised as “RPG combining Prince of Persia with The Witcher”. What would you do in the last hour of your life?

The review is based on the PC version.

Crudelis is a debut for the independent Polish studio Whiskey Jack Games. The project was built for three years in RPG Maker as a result of dev’s “being tired of typical RPGs” and as a result we get a game… that actually doesn’t have very much in common with the RPG genre. You won’t smash through dozens of quests nor travel the whole world, there are also no such things as interactive combat or improving the statistics of the character. The basics of the game mechanics are wandering between locations within small town, picking objects and speaking with NPCs. So it’s more of an adventure game than an RPG… but it’s also its minimalistic content and mechanics what makes this title so original.

Let’s start with the most important thing in Crudelis – the story. The game is advertised as set in a steampunk world, but we have close-to-none fantastic elements here so I’d rather say that it is just Victorian era (late 19th century). Action takes place in a fictional British town of Adonis Creek and the main character is Henry Shackelton – an inventor obsessed with the idea of resurrecting the dead. We meet him when he ends work on machine that makes the aforementioned possible. Unfortunately, the first test of the device is interrupted by the attack of the bandits. The protagonist is wounded badly and in the last moments of his life he decides to use his invention on himself (instead of a homeless man whom he kidnapped earlier to be used as a lab rat). Henry manages to avoid death… but not for long – the machine was constructed to resurrect dead only for 60 minutes.

This particular feature was mainly used by the developers to promote their creation. It doesn’t matter how far into the story you will delve – the game will ruthlessly end once an hour passes. However, this time limit is rather a smart narrative tool for some of 12 endings (another pride of the creators) than something the player should be always aware of. The timer stops when you read the journal, look into your inventory, check the map or speak with NPCs – and you spend most of the playtime on these actions. One would have to be really stubborn in ignoring the story or wandering through Abarian Creek without any purpose, just to “lose” because the time ended. Nevertheless, it doesn’t mean that Whiskey Jack Games’ creation is so short. Crudelis is often described as an “60-minute game” but you need at least two hours during the first attempt to reach any finale.

The leitmotif of the game is an attempt to discover who is responsible for the aforementioned attack of the bandits. To achieve this goal Henry joins his forces with detective Lester. Despite the fact that both his words and writings in the journal suggest the game having rather linear story, there are actually surprisingly many ways to develop the plot. While playing Crudelis you have to throw away all things you get used to after beating “typical” games. In this production even the most subtle action can have dramatic impact on the story, like picking some object in the prologue, speaking to a seemingly meaningless NPC or trying to choose the same dialogue option several times even if it seems to give no result. And it could work great but, unfortunately, at the same time writers forgot about many options which could come to mind of every logically thinking player. For example, why cannot I ask pedestrians about bandits if they have just run from Henry’s house through the front door? That’s why it’s easy to ignore subtle signals the game gives you and you don’t even think these small things could be so important.

Crudelis is a proposal for players who like to “squeeze out” everything from small games – and they don’t mind repeating pretty large sections of the game to check various possibilities. This last factor wouldn’t be a problem if only the developer gave some other option of saving the game than “save and exit”. Admittedly, there is also an autosave but it is used only to make sure you won’t go back and, for example, choose other line in the last dialogue – so the game is autosaved even when you die and the only option to do something differently is to start the campaign all over again. On the other hand, you can die only in very specific conditions and each form of death is counted as one of the 12 endings. However, the need to repeat large sections of the story can be more than enough to leave Crudelis after one or two attempts, as some players may not be willing to check what would happen if they “gave that guy higher bribe 30 minutes ago”. And that is another problem of this title – the only way to solve many situations is to pay enough money and there are no other solutions in some cases. So in order to achieve success, you need to waste time for completing meaningless but well-payed tasks, looking for characters willing to give Henry a loan or simple collecting all available objects and selling them to traders on the market.

That’s why instead of curiosity and desire to try the game once again, I only felt irritation when I was unexpectedly killed for the second time in the same location, in spite of making different choices each time – after playing for one hour or so. And when I finally managed to solve the whole mystery and I saw how many possibilities the story of Crudelis offers… I felt sad that so many great ideas were packed in such an imperfect form. I also felt sorry for Henry Shackelton as his story (and the whole game) is rather sad and it could be longer. Creators from Whiskey Jack Games should also be praised for the Victorian era as a historic background of the game. Developers packed the story with such problems as a conflict between technology and the tradition or treating workers as slaves during the Industrial Revolution.

Using RPG Maker to create Crudelis resulted in archaic, manga-style graphics and top-down perspective. Whether it’s looks good or not, everyone can judge for themselves by looking at screens. I can only add that the graphics is pretty clear (only font on the map is too pixelated) and the game has so low requirements that I had no problems with running it on an “ancient” laptop. However, there are problems with the user interface. Once a dialogue window shows up, the closest option is marked and clicking results in choosing it, regardless of where the cursor is pointing (unless you moved the mouse on some other option, of course). It can easily result in a painful mistake, especially when you are quickly “clicking through” conversations. It happened several times to me that I clicked one time too many while in a rush and I accidentally chose a wrong answer in the dialogue… irreversibly directing the plot towards the “bad” ending. Moreover, NPCs blocking the player in narrow paths can be irritating, the game has some minor bugs and it lacks some basic configuration options, like mouse sensitivity or screen resolution.

To sum this all up, Crudelis isn’t a perfect game, unfortunately. It was built on a great concept which could be an example for many developers but its realization has some flaws – both in terms of the narrative and technicality. If you don’t mind dealing with what I described as weak spots in the construction of the story, then I encourage you to try Crudelis – especially that the game is available in a very low price. I hope that the developers from Whiskey Jack Games will achieve success with their first creation and they will decide to make another, more ambitious project. They are talented people who want to create games in an uncommon way – and that’s something the industry shouldn’t cast away. All we have to do is to let these young developers spread their wings.