Author Archives: Ryan McCaffrey

Developers Paul Hart and Lee Williams along with publisher Akupara Games have revealed Cryptmaster, a new narrative adventure game with a distinct black-and-white art style and an even more distinct gameplay hook: it mixes text-based adventures with modern graphics to enable a sort-of Scribblenauts-meets-D&D experience in which you type out what you want your character to do next and the game responds.

Hart and Williams describe Cryptmaster as “a dungeon-crawling narrative adventure with a nostalgic visual style about a party of recently awakened dead heroes. An eccentric figure, known as the Cryptmaster, has tasked you to journey upwards through the strata of several fantastic underground kingdoms.” Watch the reveal trailer above and check out the first screenshots below.

Like in Scribblenauts, the words you type become actions in Cryptmaster, be they dialogue responses or combat moves. Plenty of puzzles and dark comedy are also promised. Wishlist it on Steam if you’re interested.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

Hey, have you heard of a game where you play a super soldier that goes to Hell to kill everything that moves? One that involves swapping exotic weapons to deal with the ever-changing challenges that a persistent horde of twisted fleshy mutant hellions provide? Well, Scathe isn’t Doom exactly. It tries its best, but very much lacks the hand-crafted gun puzzle arenas and air-tight weapon balancing that turned first-person demon-slaying on its head for at least the past seven-ish years. But what it lacks in polish, momentum, and wit it replaces with some interesting but obtuse dungeon crawling and maybe its biggest standout feature – co-op.

It may not be completely fair to compare Scathe so directly to Doom. From a distance, the similarities are obvious, but a couple of minutes with Scathe and it was clear that I was playing a game with an entirely different approach to the more famous first-person Hell shooter. Whereas id’s signature game is designed around you being an unstoppable force in perpetual forward motion, Damage State’s take requires a more staid hand, as it’s the enemies that were running me down. They spawn aggressively, with ranged attackers filling the zone with projectiles akin to a bullet hell shooter like Ikaruga or Cuphead, and melee troops charging directly at me or ambushing me from behind or around corners.

Freezing to line up shots was a death sentence, but instead of charging through the enemies like a Doomguy possessed, Scathe requires a much higher regard for personal safety. Health can only be reliably gained back by picking up shiny orange health juice sprinkled across any given room and can be in limited supply. Many of my engagements with the enemy involved strafing oncoming fire, strategically ducking around corners and obstacles, poking out to shoot my stock super rifle from a distance, taking most enemies out from at least mid range, and launching a mini swarm of rockets every so often. Further, more elusive enemies were great fodder for my longer ranged Thunderbolt, which could also arc lighting between multiple baddies doing damage over time. The Ripper was my go to for close encounters, if I got pinned down and felt the horde encroaching on my personal space, or just absolutely needed to charge my way through the blockade of baddies and my dashing attack was on cooldown. There’s even magic that can freeze turrets or crush everyone in close proximity with the wave of a hand. Scathe’s offensive options are plentiful and diverse.

In co-op, up to four players can run through this gauntlet together, though. I couldn’t get more than one other person in on the action during my demo. With the exception of the rooms that require you to kill a certain amount of enemies before progressing upping their totals, I didn’t notice any notable differences in enemy strengths or numbers while in co-op, so in a way, the more friends you bring with you into the fiery depths, the better. We did share a life pool, though, which means you’re only as efficient as the more death-prone person on your squad.

The demonic legions were pretty adequate at stopping me from my goal – navigating the labyrinth of Hell, collecting runes so that I can unlock a boss room and obliterate what was waiting for me inside. They come in various shapes and sizes, from big humanoid beasts, to giant ogres made aaof static, and even a sentient cloud of spikes flying round like a school of fish in the ocean. They wield sinister blades of bone, giant projectile canons, or sometimes just throw their bouncy ball bodies into you. None are hard to kill on their own, but in ceaseless waves, they whittle through your 10-life allotment quickly and efficiently. Luckily, besides health drops and ammo, anything you find is permanently found. This roguelite feature is great for runes, meaning you won’t have to backtrack to pick up a room full of them after you die. This is bad for things like extra lives though, making every time you have to pass through a room on your way to your goal an additional time that much more dangerous.

The maze itself is full of rooms, each marked by a symbol. Memorizing the symbols may help you identify the rooms they associate with, but there is nothing to help you determine what direction you’re going in. There is a map, but digging into the menu to consult it in between horde murder is very inconvient. Also, it only fills in rooms and how they’re connected after you explore them, and makes no mention of power-ups or weapons in them, so it’s very easy to miss valuable items because you didn’t know what you didn’t know.

The rooms themselves are interesting at least. There’s lots of platforms and obstacles to navigate and put in between you and the bad guys. Many rooms have platforming puzzles and switches that are hiding access to extra lives and other collectables. The biomes of the rooms themselves vary pretty heavily as well, some corners of the underworld are all fire and chains while others are dark and swampy. Besides aesthetics, they each also contain unique enemies which force you to adjust your strategy a bit.

Scathe definitely proves that there is room in Hell for a first-person shooter not named Doom. Filling the screen with bullets to keep you on the defensive creates an interesting and entirely different vibe than the in-your-face aggression of the competition. While the running and gunning is enticing and solid, the map feels like purgatory to explore competently without any kind of direction.

As two more big games get pushed into 2023 (Lord of the Rings: Gollum and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora), we take a look at the crush of major releases coming to Xbox next year and discuss what we’re most looking forward to. Plus: a discussion on Ubisoft’s latest Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell project cancellations and why we’ve been a bit disappointed in the major publisher in recent times.

Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, to our YouTube channel, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out our recent interview with Todd Howard, who answered all of our Starfield questions after the big reveal at the Xbox Showcase:

For more next-gen coverage, make sure to check out our Xbox Series X review, our Xbox Series S review, and our PS5 review.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.

What do you get when you cross a game of social stealth with a hero shooter? That’s what Deceive Inc wants to find out, with developers Sweet Bandits Studios cooking up a retro-future of funkadelic spies and sassy villains competing for a single prize.

Each round of Deceive Inc kicks off with a simple setup: You’ve chosen your spy, now you’re dumped unceremoniously onto the map, already disguised, one of 12 players with the same objective: Get into a secret vault, get a golden briefcase, and get out.

In a recent hands-on session, I got a chance to check out an early build of Deceive Inc. What I found was a studio trying to make something we haven’t seen before—and doing a pretty good job at it.

In a round of Deceive Inc you can take one of several broad strategies to win: You can try to move through increasing levels of security quickly to get to the case first. You can focus on tracking down other spies and eliminating them. Or you can stay low, focus on arming yourself and getting upgrades, then try to snag the case in the final mad rush to escape.

Which you’re best at will depend on what your personal skills are and on what character you pick. There are generalists, like Squire, whose silenced pistol, item-finding, and speed bursts let him excel both in and out of combat. Then there are specialists, like Madame Xiu, whose kit is all about flitting about to find and mow down enemies with an automatic crossbow.

I took a liking to Cavaliere, whose dual automatic pistols were superb at ambushing enemies in tight spaces. Combine that with her ability to do kung-fu melee leaps and I felt safe in fights. The icing on the cake was her ability to trap an entire room’s electronics, letting you pick juicy places to set up fights.

Of course, you’ve got to combine the three main strategies to win. The trick with Deceive Inc is that you have to stay flexible throughout the round, which has three phases.

First, you infiltrate. In this phase you want to gather intel points from terminals, then spend them to unlock doors, find items, and hack the terminals that open the secret vault. This is the phase of sneaking, where the map is wide open and there’s loot to grab—like the moments after the drop in a Battle Royale. Too conspicuous and another agent will pick you off. Too sneaky and the good stuff will all be gone before you get to it.

Second, the vault doors open. Now you can sneak through escalating security zones towards the prize, but so is everyone else. Anyone who wants to try and get that briefcase is being pushed into a big funnel with the other players. Anyone who wants to wait outside can do so—the rest of the map is still accessible—but they risk being out of position for phase three: the escape.

Once someone claims the briefcase they’ve got to make it to an extraction point around the map. Problem is, if you run with the case your location gets pinged, constantly, to every other player. After making it to an extraction zone, then, you’ve got another problem: First calling the escape vehicle, then getting on it, all while every spy left on the map is closing in for the kill. It’s an absolute high stakes, chaotic bloodbath.

Through those phases Deceive Inc really shows off what it’s about. The gun combat and use of hero skills play really nicely with the stealth and gadget elements, forcing you to figure out how to combine your situation with the tools you have. Combat is dangerous but times to kill are pretty high. You can usually pull off a clever escape if you feel threatened, or change tactics to figure out a way to win.

It’s nice that getting your cover blown isn’t a death sentence. Not always, at least: Your cover is a shield, so that first hit knocking you out of it has reduced damage. The problem is when you mess up, shooting an NPC or having them blow your cover by going into a restricted area without the right color-coded disguise. That leaves you exposed and vulnerable if another spy is around to notice.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on Deceive Inc as its development progresses. For more stealth multiplayer goodness, click above for the trailer for Spectre, a spiritual successor to Splinter Cell’s Spies vs. Mercenaries multiplayer mode.

Developer Game Island has announced Serum, a first-person survival game for PC in which you must craft, hunt, adapt, and survive in a forest that’s been posioned by the titular serum.

Game Island says there will be safe zones and shelters where you can craft weapons and traps and prepare to stave off the wilds. Meanwhile, you’ll need to fight off the serum-infected mutant animals in the forest.

A hook, though, is that you have to inject the serum into your own system in order to stay alive; even though it will change you physically and mentally, you will die if you don’t get more of it every few minutes. But every living thing is a potential serum source, as you can harvest the serum from enemies and other entities.

Serum does not yet have a release date, but it will be released on Steam when it’s ready.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.