Right-click to piss on the world.
"'Crypt Worlds: Your Darkest Desires Come True' is the story of humanity. It will be told through a pure new medium: 'Video Game'. It was created in the year 2013 AD by a swarm of unruly Magical Girls. You will regret this decision."
— The ReadMe File
Crypt Worlds is a freeware PC game by indie developer Lilith Zone about The Protagonist going on a quest to save the world. Despite how normal and average that sounds, it gets way weirder than that.
You wake up one morning with a goal: find the 5 Goddess Relics and bring them back to the Unicorn Goddess so that you can defeat Dendygar, who is otherwise going to destroy the world in 50 days. But the game has three endings, and you can choose to either help the Unicorn Goddess, or do something more sinister.
The Protagonist is never referred to by name and is only ever called "(YOU)". Almost everything else in the game is named in a similar way. [GOLD], [BREAD], [PISS], (GOD), the list goes on.
The graphics look very low-res and are about as grainy as a JPEG image, but they are placed on top of 3D characters, and 2D characters who look the same from every angle. Every time you talk to one of the characters, the chances of them saying something morbid or hateful are very high. Even the machine in the tunnels says that you have no emails, no friends, and that you have nothing.
Crypt Worlds can be downloaded for free here
or here.
A Kickstarter for the sequel, Crypt Underworld, had been funded, but was stuck in Development Hell since 2015. The game was finally released on itch.io, after over 8 years of waiting.
The game has examples of:
- Autosave: The game always keeps track of where you are and what you've done, which is useful because pressing the escape key will always quit the game immediately. The only way to go back is to start an entirely new game.
- All There in the Manual: The game comes with a folder called Dictionarre Crypticus which contains pictures explaining more of the game's lore. Part of it is a diagram of the Crypt Plains which seems to be showing that the world is separated into four quadrants. None of it is mentioned in the game.
- And I Must Scream: They don't appear to mind, but none of the other NPCs ever really move. They kinda just stand there.
- Some characters are both aligned horizontally and stuck in a wall.
- Apocalypse How: Dendygar's evil plot apparently involves causing a meteor to strike the earth. Or perhaps he simply hid the MacGuffins that would have allowed Moronia to stop it.
- Bigger on the Inside: The tent in the archaeologists' camp is several times the size of the cave it's in.
- Brand X: Mart Donald's.
- Breathless Non Sequitur: "It was a pleasure doing business! I hope you die! Bring me all your valuable belongings, hun! Bye!"
- Burger Fool: Mart Donald's, which uses "cleansing crystals" to recycle dead rats into edible burger meat.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land: The majority of the game - if not all of it - is a dark, slightly twisted version of this trope.
- Almost anybody can be either socially harsh for no reason, depressed, or overall mysterious, sometimes in a Suspiciously Specific Denial sort of way.
- There is more than one instance of Another Dimension in Crypt Worlds, and none of them are considered out of the ordinary by the characters in the game.
- Creator Cameo: Assuming the credits on the website aren't bogus, Cicada Marionette is one.
- Cyborg: Your reward for completing P.O.R.P.'s quest is to become one. It boosts your stats and reskins the picture of your face in the HUD.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: God Himself sends you to "Hellzone" if you starve to death, to "think about what you've done". You can just walk right back out. Or take the opportunity to awaken the Chaos God if you've collected the necessary artifacts.
- Earn Your Bad Ending: One way to destroy the world is to awaken The Chaos God (see Eldritch Abomination). You can't do this unless you pay the archaeologist in your basement to dig up all three ancient City Ruins. Then you must find the Tear itself, which involves some first-person platforming. Repeat 3 times until you have all Tears Of God, and then either starve yourself, or just jump into the convenient but inconspicuous portal to Hell in The Crypts. Once The Chaos God is awakened, almost every texture is replaced with a hellish flesh red, every NPC except for one is nowhere to be found, and all interactive features of the world are gone. You are basically left with no option other than to start a new game after that.
- Eldritch Abomination: The Chaos God is a large floating being who resides in Hell beneath The Crypts. He appears to be a gigantic angry face with buildings attached to his body. The only way to awaken him is to unite the three powerful Tears of God.
- Eldritch Location: It's possible to make a wrong move and end up in the "Glitch World". This is not a real glitch, but it does weird things to you and does not fit anywhere with the world as you know it. Once you've beaten the immobile boss monster, you don't get to go there again.
- Event Flag: A number of things happen without your involvement as the game progresses. The door to P.O.R.P. opens, NPCs in the tunnels will move to different locations and get new dialog, and the Pilgrime Village will be in ruins after an apparent attack by the Sky Pilgrimes, driving a few underground and killing everyone else except the salesman and the Piss Maniac.
- Failed a Spot Check:
- The archaeologist camp has a tent full of "archaeologist druids" who have been sacrificing archaeologists in a fire. You'd think they'd want to do something about that.
- One of the pilgrime knights in the crypt says he's been searching for Dendygar... who's right around the corner.
- Flushing-Edge Interactivity: Pissing on the world is a normal and often useful part of the game, but there are toilets you can piss in—which do absolutely nothing.
- Foreshadowing: The prophecy in the tunnels, if you choose to make it happen.
- Golden Ending: If you help The Unicorn Goddess, you can travel to The Moon and defeat Dendygar. Afterwards, every character in the game rejoices in the Pilgrime Village. Even the cultists who were trying to awaken The Chaos God express a deep happiness and contentment. You can go home, go to bed, and the game erases your save file.
- I Am a Humanitarian: It's easy to beat the game without realizing it, but picking up those green heads counts as eating.
- I Am Not Spock: In-universe, the star of the Horrible Screaming Murderer movies is literally referred to as "Horrible Screaming Murderer" in the HUD.
- In-Universe Game Clock: The game lasts for 50 days, but the days only pass when you sleep in a bed.
- Jump Scare: Check your volume before pissing on one of the archeologists.
- Lightmare Fuel: Most of the exchanges between characters in the game. Even the creator's tweets are like this.
- Mad Libs Catchphrase: Detective Joe's dialog always follows this formula: "I overheard some [people] talking about their latest find... seems like [gossip]! Well, I don't support that behavior, but I'll let you know: [comment]! All I can say..."
- No Bulk Discounts: The shopping system requires you to press a number to buy or sell an item. You can press 1 to buy [MINIBURG] as many times as you want, but you will still be paying the same amount for each one. Also applies to selling [SEEDS] for [GOLD].
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Game developer Clifford "Cliffy B" Baseball.
- The Old Gods: The Chaos God's followers refer to him as "the Old God".
- Ominous Visual Glitch: If you click on an NPC too much, they will glitch out, turning into random red and yellow pixels, and say incoherently formed sentences. Possibly foreshadowing for the Glitch World.
- Pass the Popcorn: Despite her obvious despair that you've let Dendygar destroy the world in the Bad Ending, Moronia asks if you have any popcorn. "I want to enjoy this at least!"
- The Prophecy: Some pictures on the wall of The Tunnels depict a 'hero' and his task. Clicking each one reveals the story of The Chosen One collecting the three Tears of God and using them to awaken The Chaos God. If you want a bad ending, you can actually do this.
- Shame If Something Happened: Dendygar's cousin Sammy has numerous opportunities to ruin Dendygar's life, and talks about them in this manner.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the more recognizable ones is the late-game's Debug Maze, which looks very similar to the 3D Maze screensaver from Windows 95.
- Mewl is an obvious reference to Mew from Pokémon. In addition, Mewl is found under a truck, which references a popular rumor based on the original Pokémon games.
- The shopkeeper in the Pilgrime Village says "Buy somethin' will ya?"
- Shows Damage: You have a Doom-esque face on your HUD, presumably that of your character, that functions as a hunger meter rather than a damage meter since the only thing that can kill you is starvation. It also changes if you become a cyborg.
- Silliness Switch: Unlocked by pestering the programmers in Hell enough.(GOD) SAYS: "YOU HAVE DEFEATED THE [BIG GLITCH] AND BROKEN THE VERY ESSENCE OF THIS LAND. YOU MAY NOW RETURN TO YOUR WORLD BUT NOT WITHOUT SOME SLIGHT CHANGES..."
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: Most of the NPCs are billboard sprites.
- Stealth Prequel: In the game files there is another game called Horrible Screaming Murderer that leads into the main game.
- Stealth Pun: Hell is full of game developers. In other words, it's
Development Hell. - Surprisingly Sudden Death: If you fail to grasp the undocumented hunger mechanic and somehow manage to sleep five nights in a row without picking up a single edible item.
- Surreal Horror: There is a fair amount of scary nonsense in the game, but somehow most of it is toned down with dry humour and characters talking about horrible things as though they are quite normal.
- TV Head Robot ...er, Cyborg: There's an optional quest from a SHODAN-esque supercomputer named P.O.R.P. to help it assimilate the skeletal pilgrimes. This is accomplished by apparently slamming monitors down onto their heads.
- Unicorn: The Unicorn Goddess Moronia.
- Wall of Text: Clifford Baseball goes into a spiel about video games being art, and it extends past the bottom of the screen.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: The game never tells you this—and you may very well beat the game without ever realizing it—but you have a hunger meter that will run out in five days. Luckily you almost have to try to make it happen, since picking up those huge seeds, loaves of bread, and the green corpse heads all count as eating, as does buying anything at Mart Donald's.
- You No Take Candle: The medium pilgrimes selling bread and meat talk like this.
- Zero-Effort Boss:
- The monster in the glitch world.
- Once you reach said area of the game, it's impossible to lose to Dendygar.
