The story of Crypt Sweeper isn’t in-depth and complex, as one would expect for a puzzle game. The story is that Death has discovered a loophole in their Contract. If there are no humans, it means no job, and they can take an early retirement. With Death trying to make a mad dash to retirement, it’s up to you to stop them.
Crypt Sweeper takes heavy inspiration from Minesweeper. The game is a puzzle game that consists of tiles laid out on a board, with Death taking up one of the tiled spaces. Your goal is to “walk” across these tiles in an effort to take out enemies, gather up supplies, and eventually take on Death itself.
As you progress, you must take out enemies that each have a numerical value. The idea is to go after enemies that have a lower amount of health than you have. As you take out these monsters, you gain experience points that can be used to level up your character and as you level up, you increase one HP per level. So you start out with five health, you take out a monster that has a health of four, you gain four experience points, go up a level, then you now have six HP, rinse and repeat.
Besides monsters, you can come across walls that take a few hits to break. Once broken, you might find an enemy behind it that you will have to come back to if you’re not strong enough, or you might find a shield or health that will help in your defense against the rest of the monstrous horde.
But be careful as you traverse, because the one thing you don’t want to run into is a bomb (mine). Running into one of these will ensure your demise and allow Death to retire. These bombs or mines are randomly placed each time you play, as is everything else on the board.
Crypt Sweeper is pretty impressive for a Game Boy Advance game, graphically speaking. Each enemy sprite has quite a bit of detail which is a nice thing to see. It shows how much care and dedication went into this release. With the game being a puzzle game on the Game Boy Advance, there isn’t really much more to say. I mean it’s not one of those 3D miracle games that were released back in the day, though I will admit that this game would look great as a 3D dungeon crawler instead of a top down puzzle game.
Performance is another aspect of this game that is of no surprise. You have a tiled board that you move a cursor around on to dispatch enemies and gather supplies. The Game Boy Advance really isn’t being pushed here at all as far as I can tell. I mean maybe in calculations or some math type thing, but definitely not in the graphics department. Due to the simplistic nature of the game, it doesn’t push the handheld too hard and as a result looks and performs very well.
Much like in the realm of graphics, there isn’t much in the realm of sound when it comes to Crypt Sweeper. Now don’t get me wrong, what you get in this game is great. The thing to keep in mind is that this is a puzzle game, so there isn’t much variety and it’s not some big epic playlist of songs. What you get here is a single background track that sounds really good and fits the game like a glove.
In addition to the background music, you have some neat sound effects. The sound of your weapon attacking monsters, the sound of the bomb going off when you land on it, the sounds monsters make when you attack them. All of this helps to bring the whole experience of Crypt Sweeper together.
Crypt Sweeper is a puzzle game on the Game Boy Advance. I mean that’s what it is, no denying that. But what it brings to the table is rather impressive and something that I know I have never seen a Game Boy Advance game do. It’s the fact that not only is this a puzzle game, but it’s an RPG as well. I mean a puzzle game that has you leveling up like you would an RPG, who wouldn’t love that?
I know that I most definitely love this little puzzle game on the Game Boy Advance. It’s one of the most unique puzzle game experiences you will ever find on the handheld.
So if you’re a fan of puzzle games and RPGs, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up!
Those interested can check out the game here.
A review copy was provided.
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.