Crypt Custodian Review — All Cats (Do Not) Go to Heaven

A charming little game about janitorial service and the afterlife, Crypt Custodian challenges you to literally beat and bash undead baddies as you clean up purgatory. While not what I would call incredibly innovative for the genre, Crypt Custodian is cute, fun, full of charm, and sure to win you over easily.

Crypt Custodian follows the story of a little cat named Pluto who met an unfortunate and tragic end after escaping from its home one evening. Awakening in the afterlife, our feline protagonist is immediately told that they are to be judged based on how they lived their life. If they were good in life, they’d be sent to The Palace, an eternal paradise. If they were bad, though, they’d be forced to live just outside the palace in a land full of monsters and implied suffering (likely largely due to the monsters.)

After finding a broom and clearing out some statues that blocked our path to judgment, our protagonist has the book of their life reviewed and found that they were wholesome and good, as all small house cats should be deemed. Nothing in our kitty-cat’s life warrants anything other than salvation. The afterlife, however, is a little different. It turns out breaking those statues on your way to judgment was pretty rude, and as punishment, you are denied paradise and made to be the afterlife’s janitor instead.

Crypt Custodian is surprisingly wholesome for a game about a cat meeting an untimely death and being doomed to a monster-infested purgatory forever.

It can easily be said that the conceptual subject matter of Crypt Custodian is… heavy. However, the game never really dwells on it, at least in my experience, not in any way that feels dramatic or melancholy. It treats the afterlife playfully, with Pluto being doomed to custodial duty for the rest of eternity, never being portrayed as anything other than tough luck.

The game’s art style helps a lot with this, with everything portrayed in a very cartoony, cute to look at style. I especially enjoyed how regular animals become anamorphic in death. While the game looks cute, and the artist certainly knows how to draw an adorable cat face, I also felt as though the art had a bit of somberness to it, be it the color palette or the expression on the face of your kitty-cat soul at save shrines. It just felt like there was a little bit of hidden sadness in the game that wants to portray death and the afterlife as no big deal.

The game gives you plenty of chances to meet other so-called “bad ghosts,” and each time, the characters felt charming and likable, even during brief exchanges. My favorite was the Crow bartender. The concept of a bunch of doomed souls creating a bar is fun, and it reminds me of the sort of outlook on death and the afterlife that Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride had.

If you’re a frequent reader of my reviews, it should come as no surprise that Tim Burton is a big inspiration of mine.

A huge part of Crypt Custodian is also the music, but I’ll leave that for you to discover yourself. What I will say is that in parts of my playthrough, I found myself completely zoning it, simply staring out my office window and contemplating life while I listened to the game’s OST.

When it comes to gameplay, Crypt Custodian is a Metroidvania-type platforming beat-em-up with some Legend of Zelda inspirations.

The gameplay mainly revolves around you traversing a large map comprised of several zones, with progress forward blocked by various tasks or requiring some exploration to grab key items (sometimes literally a key.) Along the way, you’ll be ambushed by various enemies, who you bash with your broom until they fall apart and reward you with cash money (in the form of gross bits of dead souls.)

The enemy types in Crypt Custodian are probably my favorite aspect of the game. They just have so much variety and are so interesting to look at, from little pots with shrewd eyes peeking through cracks to actual skeletal spider-monster things that are going to be in my nightmares later. Despite the game’s generally light tone, they allow some aspects of body horror and the theme of death to slip into their enemy designs, and it’s something I really appreciate.

The main currency in Crypt Custodian comes from cleaning up the dead, aka bashing enemies with brooms and wiping up mounds of black tarry bone left around the map. Doing so allows you to trade gathered bits for a series of upgrades and special attacks.

I found the amount of upgrades and special attacks available in Crypt Custodian to be pretty good. There are not as many as, say, a roguelike title, but there are enough where you are constantly working towards a new upgrade goal, making gathering sludge an actual worthwhile experience.

Crypt Custodian, being a Metroidvania title, is pretty heavy on platforming. Usually, this is my least favorite aspect of the genre. Something about sidescrolling and constant platforming puts me off from these games. Crypt Custodian, however, subverts this by being a sort of horizontal plane where you can move freely rather than a sidescrolling game. I thought this made the platforming and combat a bit more fun and kept me interested longer than most Metroidvania titles manage to.

While Crypt Custodian doesn’t feel like it reinvents the wheel mechanically, it is unique enough in its presentation and pleasant in its gameplay. It’s certainly a game worth playing through and one that is sure to stick with you whether or not you see it through to the end.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Crypt Custodian is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.