Crypt Underworld: The End of History
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:
Ten years pass, and its desires are forgotten. They seep into crevices in the earth, where they accumulate and admix, taking on ambiguous new shapes. From these caverns of human experience, where forgotten desires linger, an echo is heard in the world of the living:
Crypt Underworld: The Final Videogame™!
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FOREWARD
by
Martin Amis
Crash! Bang! Wallop! These are the sounds I make every day. Yet they’re also, emotions. And these are just some of the many emotions that have been secreted over centuries in the far-reaching catacombs sprawled underneath the city - the very same catacombs that once acted as home to the bandit, Pompelmo, in his reign of terror on the city above. Please grab a seat so that I can tell you about it.
In the year 17XX, still in the living memory of certain persons, a certain bird once flew to a certain house and made a noise some described as “beguiling”. This was the beginning of what we now know as modernity and pretty soon we had all set about being modern in the new and stylish way. I would say I was a “computer programmer” named “Jim” who was working on “soft ware” to “eliminate the ability to make a living”. Oh, how we laughed. But who was laughing when I went home to find my wife in the arms of another man? That’s right – Pompelmo was laughing. Pompelmo, whose arms they were!
The next few centuries were not so hot. But the practice of “computer game design” – building gadgets to slowly and ingeniously kill whoever was operating them, through a delicate arrangement of gears and wires – never died out absolutely. In walks outside the city you might see a picturesque peasant sullenly whittling something in a hut or attempting to flagellate herelf with a tree branch that had the words FINAL FANTASY 8 carved on it in uneven letters. Yet the state of the art form as a hole remained static. Time passed. Various murders, massacres etc. Piles of bodies in the woods. Trip hop was invented and then forgotten, multiple times. They were long centuries.
Finally as every schoolchild knows the invention of CRYPT WORLDS, by the “laughing cowboy of games” known by her saddle stitching as Cicada Marionette, lit up the night skies of our lives like a bomb or firework or something edit this later. At long last the questions which had been bugging us for the last while – “What is ‘meaning’? Where did I put it? It was right here, I swear” - were definitively answered, in terms so celebrated it would be redundant to list them again here. Noble families went on outings to the pilgrime village or the corpse tunnels and marvelled at the feeling that here at last was an experience that had no end. Yet, what was that face we could dimly make out, leering at us from the depths of the digital caverns? Could it be… the familiar face of Pompelmo? Pompelmo, who was never caught by the authorities, and whose valuable emeralds – mark this – never recovered…?
Dear reader, both you and I are dead. As ghosts we can talk only about what was and what will be, and not what is, as per non-disclosure regulations. Yet there are rumours, glimpses. They say that in the ghost world there are videogames also – that the scrap, junk, slime, debris of waking life, plunged into the afterworld, retains some sense of the shape it once had. Goes rolling together in the dark and forms new shapes, buildings, rooms. Piling up in memory into the image of that memory, bearing traces of what once was but turned inwards, inside out. A rambling catacombs… just like the catacombs that once… ah!! I can say no more, for I have just been stabbed, by Pompelmo. Yet we are both ghosts now so the gesture is moot and my response just that of politeness. We each have our own little hobby horse it seems.
Traveller, beware my consumer survey wisdom. In her dark cavern beyond the centuries Cicada Marionette and Zoe Spinnylights create the snare which entangles mankind. In this vast heaped assemblage of rooms, doors, impossible areas, trampolines, frogs, piss physickes, capsule toys, windows to other people’s rooms, glimpsed figures, office workin’, worship of the dread god Dendygar, memories and dreams etc, could it be that we finally have a version of that "ultimate videogame" the thought of which man has used to console himself thru all the miserable centuries...? Hm! Who knows! I’ll have to think about it. Thanks for reading my report. Excelsior!
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CONTROLS
Left Click - Interact / Select
Right Click - Piss
Tab - Open Inventory
Space - Jump
Shift - Run
Esc - Open Exit Menu (only works if not in other menus)
0 - Take a screenshot (saved under 'Crypt Underworld_Data' in the game's folder)
GAME AUTOSAVES ALWAYS
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CREDITS
GAME - ME!!!
COOL MUSIC AND SFX by: ESPer99
Original / Distorted Crypt Worlds SFX + Ominous Bell Sound by: Liz Ryerson
Cut-Up Dialogue uses SCISSORS by Zoe Spinnylights who also contributed to ideas in the game!
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OFFICIAL 1920x1080 Crypt Wallpapers featuring very cute art by Mariken!
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Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- !FINAL! update for the time beingAug 12, 2023
- YES EXCITING NEW QOL UPDATES FOR *YOU* ENCLOSED WITHINAug 08, 2023
- !EMERGENCY UPDATE!Aug 01, 2023
- another updateJul 31, 2023
- last one this weekJul 29, 2023
- anotherJul 28, 2023
- day2Jul 28, 2023
- fixesJul 27, 2023
Comments
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Hello, so, i don't know how to express this in a way that conveys how much i love this, but this enters my top 3 of the BEST games i've encountered in Itch.io. Hell, one of the best experimental games in general. It's such an endearing surreal experience and games like yours is why i call games art. And, well, i love the oniric feel it has for me. I've been playing this almost since it came out, but i didn't make a review at the time because i didn't knew (and i still don't to be honest) how to express the genuine excitement of playing this. I really wish you the best, you made something beautiful and damn, i have to read the volume 2 of Bessttsy City...
ive been waiting for this game since the milisecond it was announced. crypt worlds is a game that changed me forever, always holds a deep place in my heart. Thank you so much for what you do. Very inspiring artist.
i could write pages upon pages about this, but instead, ill put this time into playing this game for days and days on end
=)
this game fucks so hard
This is my personal game of the year for 2023, it's so good :D
This is amazing. There are so many places to find in this game! I think my favourite area so far was the dark swamp/lake area with the characters in boats. Something I do miss is the lighting from the earlier versions of the game, it really added to the atmosphere (not sure if this has been changed, I downloaded the game a few months ago when it came out). Either way, it's a very immersive world.
I just got a new computer recently which is much faster, so now I can finally play lag-free. Need to give the game another go!
hmm... the movement feels strange compared to the build i've played in the past
deacceleration is reallyyy slow... takes a good second to stop regardless of if i'm using the bedazzled version or not
also the way i'm facing affects my movement in the air feels uncomfortable and strange...
wondering if there's something wrong with my setup? or if the game is just intended to be this way
hope its not intended to be like this, it feels really uncomfortable..
EDIT: lack of a mouse sensitivity slider is also quite discouraging... i've been really excited to play this but.. mm... maybe i'll try again later when i'm feeling better. feeling a bit off atm and this isn't helping
After playing the game probably 10-20 hours by now, both just for fun and to get footage for a video, my main gripes would be that the character controller is definitely odd and quite uncomfortable to use, and the lack of mouse sensitivity or FOV options are rough for quality of life - the FOV quite subtly gives the game a sort of nausea-inducing feeling in addition to the character controller.
Then, on top of that, the lighting being so extreme makes it a lot to... take in when you're playing.
I suspect some of these changes are related to the way the character controller is affected by the various armor pieces you can get which can be activated/deactivated to give bonuses to your movement.
I would imagine there was an earlier character controller that was a bit more intuitive and then they had to create a new one that was able to receive all these bonuses to various aspects of it, and creating a first person character controller from scratch is quite a frustrating and complex task. I don't blame them but I'd love to see a new version one day that uses a revamped character controller and has FOV and mouse sensitivity options.
Did just about everything outside of finding that last damn coffin. Is there any sort of discord for this game/community? I'd like to share shenanigans and also see how others played.
a masterpiece!!
Did a full playthrough finally, love the game, keep up the great work! (also where is the final drac statue??)
waaaaa
The 64 Linux build fades to a yellow screen and doesn't do anything, and the regular Linux build crashes my computer entirely.
I've been waiting for this game since the original came out, but I guess I'll have to wait a little longer until I get ahold of a Windows machine.
Holy shit. I never thought I would live to see the day this finally came out.
I am so very excited to see this get a "final" release! I am workin on a Linux machine at the moment and not well versed in it's operation. How do I run/install this beautiful piece of art?
Local wizards have cast spells upon my laptop. Piss to the World! <3
Hi i just wanted to say that Crypt Worlds is like my favorite bizarro indie game and i have finished it like 4 times and i JUST found out the sequel released and just wanted to say thank you for your great work over the years. its genuinely inspiring.
Oh also just to ask a question. wasn't there a fully custom engine made for crypt underworlds? i noticed the github page has been scrubbed of all mentions of the game, and the game itself is in unity. did something happen that lead to switching back to it?
It's a bit of a kerfuffle with regards to the two developers of the game, I wouldn't discuss it here as it seems to be a sensitive subject. Basically one of the developers wanted to recreate the engine from scratch and one of the developers wanted to just get the game finished and shipped.
I wont play until I can pay <3
thank you, ive waited many years. :)
At this point I think I've played 8 hours at least, I've beaten the game, and seen what I assume must be every area. I'm really impressed by the game and it's clear how much work has gone into it. It has a great sense of humor, a wonderful aesthetic, and I love some of the more subdued and quieter areas in the game like the Museum, Ghost Buffet, Necropolis, Paradise Garden, Cosmos, Lonely Apartment, etc... in comparison to the many loud, abrasive areas just absolutely chock full of stuff. I'm really glad you decided to release it and I hope that releasing it will mean you can take a break for a while and let your mind cool down after spending so much of your life working on this thing. I know just as well that a project like this can sort of destroy your brain over time.
As far as negatives, I wish the 3d-space-swirl/spin effect when you get hit by bombs or touch meat/conveyer belts, and the fact that hotdogs force you to vomit for 10 seconds (which makes the game near-unplayable in many areas when you unblock the hotdog factory) were changed. Perhaps an Iron Stomach upgrade to make it so you can eat hotdogs like burgers instead of getting force-bezoar'd and an Iron Equillibrium upgrade to remove the spin effect would do a lot to help the quality of life.
The lighting is obviously not ideal but you're clearly aware of that, so I don't think it helps to mention that, and I love the aesthetic of the whole thing, I just wish some areas weren't so mind-meltingly bright in the bedazzled version.
The character controller seems to have a glitch that causes it to frequently veer off in one direction rather than go straight forward much of the time, I'm not sure what causes that but it can be pretty annoying sometimes.
this was very special thank u so much, crypt worlds was wildly inspiring to what i wanted to do and this is just fantastic and fun,, and meaningful.
When we needed her most... she returned
I've been playing the game, and... wow. It's been really fun so far! Visited many places, did a lot, it's been a really fun and weird and sometimes disturbing time! Even tho I never played Crypt Worlds, which folks say is easier to get into, I honestly thought it was pretty smooth goin'!
Also, uh, something I just wanted to check up... where did you get the audio for the Cowboys and Archeologists? I'm just asking 'cus, I could be wrong, but... it's literally a sentence in my home language! It's Portuguese, maybe with some accent from the south, Alentejo maybe! "Nunca mais vem... solinho", it's this, right?
Hearing about this made my entire month. I'm sad that I didn't get to try it sooner. The original Crypt Worlds is one of my favorite games, and a big inspiration for my game development aspirations. Thank you for putting your art out into the world, it does not go unappreciated.
Seems like there's an issue with piss upgrades that you get from the Piss Guild members, they don't do anything and disappear permanently if you reduce the level.
The bedazzling is lovely! Such a different mood to some places. Though, I wonder if I had played this version first if I would have found as much stuff. More dark areas.
Also, enjoy vacation! Free yourself from the curse of toil.
you call that piss? heh. child's play
I'm so glad this is finally out, I've poured countless hours into the previous builds and will gladly engage with this masterpiece once more, Mall Ghouls are best girls. Also, is there a chance for a download of the entire OST? I would pay money for that. The theme for the arcade is especially good.
thank you for releasing the bedazzled version. such a treat to look at. love the art you come up with and the color of the lighting in every map really brings so much more out of this game. keep up the amazing work
thank youu!
Hey Lilith Zone. I'm very interested in Crypt Underworld and the rest of your work and planning to make a video on it if you're okay. Do you know where I can contact you so I can ask you some question (kind of a mini interview) ?
I have uploaded the last builds I'm going to do for awhile. I am taking a vacation for a bit so I won't be checking here as much. Read the latest update for more details
I dont get it...
amazing amazing sequel, it's everything i've been looking forward since playing crypt worlds and more, thank you so much for creating something so genuine and raw.
also! i think i found a bug in the "waters below" zone where peeing on the ancient tulip knocks you back way outside the map. i tried landing back onto the tulip after falling for about a minute and i was launched so far upwards that the map unloaded. when i tried using a warp to load into another area my upward momentum didn't go away and i kept flying out of every warp until i restarted the game.
last thing! unless i've missed an item, i keep finding these blue eggs around the world that have the green interactable hand icon whenever i hover over them, but nothing seems to happen when i try to pick them up. this could be user error though!
Ok, so... how exactly do you get into that Waters Below area legitimately? I was pushed outside the map when I was about to fight the First Homunculus I think, and I then landed there.
i think you're only meant to get to it by falling out of the world in several areas, which becomes a lot more accessible after you get some mobility.
also, where is the first homunculus fight? i don't remember encountering like that on my playthrough.
Well, if you fall off of the Labyrinth and land on the lakes down below, you'll find a door that leads to a place called... the Sunken Court or Drowned Court, something like that. It seems to be an area where many masked homunculi live, they even have many popes to worship, and in one of the last rooms, you can find it, past the area with the craddle. At least, that's how I think it was called - I didn't get to fight it when I opened its sarchophagus, as I was thrusted out of bounds immediatly. Sadly, you can't repeat the fight either, so I hope I didn't miss any crazy items or so.
Hey, this game is incredible. I've been enjoying it so much!
I ran into an issue where I bought the wallet, but my coins are still maxed at 100. I've also had some frame drops in certain areas, but that is probably to be expected with this style of game.
which area is the wallet in? i'll try to get to it before i put out the last update for now
I believe it it from the pilgrime in the happy market.
Also, the mouse sensitivity while playing is extremely high in comparison to other games
Thanks for fixing stuff!
Excellent! I've been waiting so long for this sequel.
I'm curious, are there any things to examine so as to hear your inner monologue like in the previous game? I only played for a couple minutes so far and I haven't seen anything like that.
there's a few, mostly items you can get for your apartment, but i mostly just forgot about that while writing it. if/when i come back to developing it more i'll see if i can find more opportunities to
Hi if you ever want someone to help you make the game I would love to
Awesome! Thank you for writing!
Not sure if it's a bug or intended stank, but I managed to get the Bomb weapon up to level 17, and now I can't use them anywhere without the sheer force of the explosion and the resulting destruction making the game freeze forever and have to be force-closed. Assuming it is intended, I see that my hubris in wanting bigger explosions has brought me low.
hey it's mostly just something i hadn't spent the time to add, the latest build has the feature to manually set equipment levels by pressing on '-' and '+' buttons below items, but unfortunately you'd have to start a new save due to the weird scaffolding i built to do this. i might add some vendors so you can sell off excess equipment before i take a vacation as well, but we'll see.
anyway should've added it sooner but lemme know if it works if you get around to it
Tested it on a new save and it works great, thanks, now I can get back to exploding things. Seems like 5 is the ideal level for bombs to be able to detonate everything without freezing the game longer than a second or two, at least on my hardware, might differ for others with beefier PCs.
I've been a huge fan of Crypt World since I played it in 2016. The atmosphere of the game is akin to magic, giving me an experience unlike any other piece of media I have consumed. Having played Crypt Underworlds, I can safely say that it is no different. In fact, it is so much grander.
I'll get my only gripe out of the way; I figured that the nice lighting from earlier versions being removed was due to optimization, but the game does not hold the same atmosphere without it. I have no idea if it would be a difficult task to have a settings toggle for the lighting on startup, but that would be a nice compromise. Don't feel like you have to though, as you have already worked hard enough. I mean that.
That being said, getting around is a lot easier. Especially moving vertically. The item equip and leveling system is so weird yet perfectly in place with the world. I love how you can find (most of) these items in so many locations; that contributes to the freedom well. It also allows for so many fun little secrets to be hidden around the place.
Areas feel packed with stuff to see. So many areas, models, little doo-dads to just gaze at. I seriously admire how much effort went into every little thing. I love the text too. I rarely interact with every little thing in a game, but I do here because it somehow manages to be varied despite there being tons of text.
I just want to say more and more but at the same time I don't feel like I have the right words for it. Thank you and the rest of the people who contributed to this gigantic project. Very rarely do games stay in development for this long and show that it was worth the wait. This is one of them.
yeah the changes with lighting are unfortunate, i am going to work on updates for another week or so then take a break for awhile, but before i take off i'm going to take a day to restore the lighting + materials of the original version as an optional 'bedazzled' build, so keep an eye out for that by next week.
i really appreciate it- so much time was spent just zooming in the unity camera continuously piling on more dense junk on every surface- making all the models and doing that took up a ridiculous amount of the developmenttime, but im glad it sounds like the dense wonderland of junk to piss on came alive for you. i hope to do more updates eventually just to add more goofy bits, collectible junk, and broken out of bounds areas onto the heap...
Two small bugs
i have these both fixed now, i'll make sure to upload it tomorrow
i uploaded a new build that should fix both of these, let me know if you try- you may need to start a new save file due to additions in the equipment system tho
Delightful and wonder inspiring. Haven't found an end if there is one, but my boy drac is safe and that's all that matters.
You made magic outta piss.
thank youu
Heads up that the x64 build for Linux is broken, but I can launch the x86 one by hand, and that works fine.
yeah sorry i haven't had a chance to do any testing of the linux builds, i felt obligated to include them but i hope it's working alright!
I've just finished the game after a week of playing through it. It's such a fun game that keeps delivering and giving enjoyment looking around everywhere. Absolute gem.
thank you! glad to hear it!
you made something really cool here, this is top of the aimless garbage beholding experience simulator class. i want to say it feels like it was made for me but that would be cheap, so much spirit obviously went into this and its a very special artifact, more than worth the wait
thank you it means a lot knowing
I got my jar of blood AND the game got made? Holy shit!
Awesome hyperrealistic graphics
possible bug: any time i have encountered a warp or door that leads to a sheep area i am warped to the museum. im also not certain if the infinite piss mask is working, since my piss meter still seems to drain.
this game is an actual masterpiece otherwise!!
do you have the most recent build? i think secret sheep city should be fixed as of yesterday, but if its the most recent one still i'll look into it. not sure what could be going on with the mask but i'll check on that as well before next version i upload
sheep city works now! i just didnt have the most recent build tysm !!
totally, glad to hear it! enjoy the sheep