You need to play Cryptmaster — but dear god, don’t use a compact keyboard

You’ll type a lot in Cryptmaster, but I wouldn’t call it a typing game. No, Cryptmaster is a word game: The dungeon-crawling adventure is all about finding the right word for a whole bunch of different wacky scenarios. Typing is how you use that power.

Here’s the setup: You’re playing as four (dead) adventurers who have been awoken by the cryptmaster to, well, adventure through a creepy-crawly world and do his biddings. The catch is that these four people have lost all their memories, and a bunch of lost words are the key to unlocking them. The keyboard is everything (but you can use a controller or play on your Steam Deck). The arrow keys are essential to movement, and you’ll use the rest of the keyboard to type words that control everything else.

Say you’ve found a mysterious chest on the ground — you’ll open it by typing chest. Then you’ve got to guess what’s inside by asking the cryptmaster to describe the item. Type feel and the cryptmaster will give it a touch and describe the experience; type taste and he’ll describe its mouthfeel; type look and he’ll say what it looks like. When you answer these riddles correctly, the cryptmaster will award you with some letters that hang out under the four portraits of the protagonists. Once you have enough letters, you can use them to guess the answer; under each name, there are cards with slots for missing letters, which end up spelling out commands for each respective character to assist in battle, stuff like jab, kick, crabs, or soothe. You’ll also earn letters when fighting off opponents, who drop letters from their names when they’re defeated.

These command words are important to remember: They’re how you’ll fight off Cryptmaster’s evil foes. This is where I want to reinforce that Cryptmaster is a word game and not a typing game. It’s not really that you must type fast; instead, you must recall and use these words quickly and efficiently, managing cooldown times, attacks, and shielding. On top of it all, there are puzzles, riddles, and minigames to discover, all iterating on the way that words work in Cryptmaster.

Though the black-and-white world looks simple, Cryptmaster is anything but. Its goofy-yet-creepy style is reinforced throughout, most importantly through its words. Words are not just something you do in Cryptmaster; the world itself is built around them. Words are silly, creepy, weirdo little powers, embedded into every detail.

There is just one problem with Cryptmaster, speaking as a person who uses a compact keyboard without an arrow pad: That problem is me. I get by without an arrow pad on an everyday basis; the function key is my best friend. But I’ve only just realized that it’s a nightmare for playing games, thanks to Cryptmaster. It’s been hard to juggle to focus on both typing and holding down the function key to create a makeshift arrow key. But, once again, this is a problem of my own doing. And I like Cryptmaster enough that I’ve now got an external four-key directional pad in my digital shopping cart.

Cryptmaster was released May 9 on Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a download code provided by Akupara Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.