Full Makeover and Testable Multiplayer

Cryptr has been quiet since the last update on November 17, 2023.

This update is the result of improvements based on bug reports, the playtest notes, and the feedback you left me, and rather than patch around the old prototype I finally built a combat system from scratch. You will find a new first-party combat and animation system, a clean render pipeline, a real hub, sixteen dungeons (currently 1 available, more to come soon), a new assortment of enemies, and online Steam co-op you can play with 4 friends right now. Multiplayer is in active development and ready to test. There is a lot here, and a lot more on the way.

Everything below has landed since that last Steam push.

The Makeover

• New combat and animation backbone. Every class now runs on a hand-built first-party system instead of the prototype kit. Smoother crossfades, snappier response, no more placeholder poses. Expect more optimizations to be made with combat and movement animations in future patches.

• New locomotion across the roster. Walking, running, sprinting and jumping were rebuilt on a cleaner animation set, and heroes now pivot in place to face a new direction instead of sliding on the spot.

• Hack-and-slash combos that build to a finisher. Melee chains escalate, each hit landing harder than the last, capped by a wider-arcing finisher that cleaves the front rank. Running attacks let you lunge into a pack instead of stopping to swing.

• A cinematic look you control. A cold steel-blue grade, vignette, and film grain settle over the dungeon, with torches and magic glowing warm against the gloom. Every piece is tunable from the Video tab, or switch it off for the classic render.

• The pink is gone. A project-wide pass converted hundreds of materials left magenta by the render-pipeline switch back to their proper textures across enemies, environments, and props.

Multiplayer, Ready to Test

• Bring up to four friends into the crypt. Online co-op hosts a full party of four, joining straight through Steam. Everyone moves, fights, and animates in sync as you descend together.

• You decide who joins. When a friend asks in, a prompt names them and you press Y to allow or N to decline. Joining friends drop in right beside you, even mid-run.

• One of each class. No two players run the same hero. Whoever locks a class first keeps it, and it shows as taken for everyone else.

• Gather the party. Stepping into a dungeon starts a shared countdown so no one is left behind, and the whole party backs out together when the host leaves.

• See your party at a glance. Each friend gets an ornate character frame showing their class, level, and live health and resource bars.

Rich Steam Presence

• Your friends can see what you are actually doing. Cryptr now shows rich status in your Steam friends list: choosing a hero at the Tower gate, cutting through a named zone with your class and Mastery level, facing a zone warden, clearing a zone, or falling in it. It updates live as you play.

Heroes and Ascension

• Four classes, each with an Ascended form. Knight into Paladin, Ranger into Warden, Wizard into Necromancer, Berserker into Ravager. Take a base class to level 50 to unlock its Ascended form.

• Level to 100 and feel every level. Kills feed XP, and each level makes your hero stronger automatically, Gauntlet-style, with the curve tuned to stay rewarding the whole way up.

• Talent trees, press N. Each class has its own six-tier tree of stat boosts, passives, and signature powers, with deeper tiers gated behind earlier picks. Respec for free anytime.

• Spells and weapons look the part. The Wizard throws a real ice ball and channels a fire beam, the Necromancer drops a true bone-shard storm and raises the dead, the Ranger looses a proper bow shot, and the Knight bashes with his shield mid-block.

A Monstrous Opponents

• A roster that fights back. Skeletons, goblins, orcs, ghouls, ratkin and more, alongside elites, dragons, golems, trolls, ogres, and towering bosses like the Demon Lord, Hydra, and Chimera. Each hunts, pathfinds, telegraphs, flinches, and dies on its own terms.

• Real matchups. Armored brutes shrug off blades but melt to spells, casters resist magic and crumble to melee, and frost foes chill you while fire foes burn. Which hero you bring matters.

• Surprises in the dark. Mimics that spring from chests, an invisible Orc Assassin, ceiling-dropping lurkers, and the life-draining Reaper that only arcane power can banish.

• Bosses that escalate. Named health bars across the top of the screen, fights that build into faster, harder phases, and brief stagger windows that reward a committed heavy swing.

Dungeons and the Tower

• A real keep to call home. The Tower hub is now a walled fortress with a central class altar, four sector gateways, guardian statues, braziers, and drifting fog.

• Sixteen hand-crafted dungeons, never the same twice. Four sectors, four dungeons each, built fresh on every entry but each with its own designed character, from claustrophobic catacombs to a spire-climbing citadel to flooded temple vaults to branching lava caverns.

• Every dungeon has a goal. Clear it, destroy all spawners, survive the onslaught, or defeat the boss, with an on-screen tracker counting your progress and a Gauntlet-style scoreboard at the end.

• The dungeons fight back. Spawn fountains pump out monsters until you smash them, ambushes trigger on entry, and the boss gate only opens once the level is cleared.

Sound, Atmosphere, and a Living World

• Combat that hits. Weapon impacts, arrow thwips, and a distinct sound for every spell school, answered by monster voices that rasp, snarl, and creak. A Creature Voices slider lets you mix them on their own.

• A dungeon that listens. Each wing has its own soundscape and a tension layer that rises under the music when a fight breaks out, then eases back with a long tail. Everything crossfades, nothing cuts.

• A living sky and per-sector weather. A full day-night cycle with twinkling stars and shooting stars overhead, and weather that matches each wing you travel into.

• Wildlife that acts like itself. Birds scatter, deer bolt, livestock mill about, and the big animals fight back if you pick on them. It all stays in sync in co-op.

Quality of Life

• An updated main menu and one settings screen everywhere. Single Player, Multiplayer, Settings and Exit, with Steam Community, Store, and Feedback links that open in the overlay, and the same full options panel from the title screen and in-game.

• Pause anytime and make the game yours. Rebind keys, mix Master, Music and Sound-Effects volume, and tune quality, frame cap, V-Sync, and the cinematic look. Auto-Detect picks sensible settings for your machine in one click.

• Player profiles and per-character saves. Sharers each keep their own roster, with sturdier background auto-save that flushes on pause and quit and survives a crash mid-save.

• Steam achievements have arrived. A mix of milestones and mischief in the Gauntlet Legends spirit, saved per profile.

A Few of the Many Fixes

• No falling out of the world: a stray gap now sets you safely back on solid ground.

• The Quality setting actually changes the graphics now across resolution scale, anti-aliasing, and shadows.

• The view freezes when you pause instead of swinging around behind the menu.

• Arrows fly level toward your target instead of angled at the ground.

• Your hero turns to face where you aim, so swings, arrows, and spells land where you are looking.

• Health regenerates out of combat again, and many class-specific spawn and animation bugs are resolved.

Known Issues

• The new co-op flow (host accept and reject, host-only pause, the dungeon-entry countdown, and the party following the host out) is freshly wired and still needs a full multi-player live test. This is exactly where additional testing helps most.

• The Paladin's two-handed grip is still being fine-tuned and may sit slightly off in the hand.

• The mass pink-material fix flattened some custom vendor shaders, so a few surfaces (animated foliage, flowing lava, translucent ice, snow-blended rock) look simpler than intended for now. Texture and lighting carry over; the motion and translucency return as those packs get proper shader variants.

• A few specialty effects can still appear pink, mainly certain realistic-water VFX and some castle foliage. These are being handled one at a time rather than flattened.

This is a foundation, not a finish line. Multiplayer testing is open, more dungeons and the shopkeeper's wares are coming, and I am reading your feedback. Thank you!