Indie Time: Corrypt

Now that I’ve finished playing Dishonored (for now, anyway), I started up another big-budget game. But I won’t be able to post about it. Fortunately, I have a backlog of shorter indie games I’ve been meaning to write about. First up is Corrypt, which was making noises in the indie scene a few weeks ago.

Corrypt is a puzzle game. You move your character around the screen one square at a time, pushing boxes around, like you’ve done in many other such games. This time you will also pull boxes, which might seem like a minor detail but was actually a big enough change to keep me stumped in quite a few puzzles. At these times I appreciated being able to explore other parts of the world and try my hand at a different puzzle for a change. Soon I was making good progress, and enjoying the rather strange visuals and excellent music.

If that was all Corrypt was, it would still be worth a look. But it soon became apparent that Corrypt is much, much more.

I must admit, that when the new, game-changing mechanic was introduced, I didn’t get it. I messed around a little, couldn’t tell what had happened, and then hit the “undo” button to try again (an extremely handy button that will undo everything, screen by screen, all the way back to the beginning if necessary). If I had just pressed on a bit and tried to figure it out, I’m sure I would have gotten it, but instead I took to the internet to see what I was missing.

What I was missing was an utterly brilliant mechanic. I don’t want to spoil what it is, so I’ll just say that it (literally) changes everything. What was once a nice little puzzle game became a mind-boggling maze of possibilities. So many, in fact, that I was sure I would trap myself in some inescapable situation. But it’s a testament to Corrypt’s ingenious design that this only happened a handful of times, and I was saved by the ever-useful undo button. Still, after making a lot of progress I found myself stuck again, and headed to the internet for help. It turns out my thinking had been far too limited. I hadn’t stopped to think about what this new mechanic really, truly meant. My mind was blown all over again.

And Corrypt isn’t only impressive in its mechanics, but also the way they are fused with the aesthetics and presentation. The absolutely perfect music and strange sound effects really come forward when things start to get weird, and lend a delightfully creepy vibe to the whole endeavor. It’s nothing if not a memorable experience.

To say more would be to spoil it for you. I highly recommend checking it out. I played it on PC (for free) but it’s also available for iOS for a small fee. It will only take you a few hours to play through, and your mind will thank you when you’re done.