Crystal Project, a modern classic indie RPG

[Bongo]

Crystal Project is a game made to satisfy everyone who played RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s. You assemble a party of four personality-free custom generic party members, and go forth to adventure to your heart's content in an open-ended world. It's all made of voxels, with some light platforming to enhance the exploration. There's a job system! NPCs or your own sense of direction may guide you to places where a boss is guarding a new job for you to level up. Combat is rich and tactical, based on a system of aggro management. Everything about the game moves fast and smooth and convenient, and I'm digging the soundtrack. I'm still early, but anything could be hiding in here. Just a really impressive production all around. Highly recommended.

 

[Mogri]

I picked up the demo on the recommendation of several TT members. It's pretty good!

 

[Beowulf]

Intriguing! I'm going to put this on my Steam wishlist.

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I'm going to keep an eye on it, too - it looks cool, but I don't particularly like wandering around figuring out where to go next, so I'd like to read some more about it to see if the impression I get is wrong...

 

[Bongo]

It's nonlinear, so where to go next is just wherever you do go next. If you give you've bitten off more than you can chew you can backtrack and try somewhere else. So far I've found no shortage of forks in the road. I assume there's an ending hidden somewhere in here but I haven't detected a plot yet.

 

[Kazin]

No plot at all, eh? That's... fascinatingly weird for an RPG. I've seen some dialogue boxes, how's the writing that is there?

 

[Bongo]

No plot at all, eh? That's... fascinatingly weird for an RPG. I've seen some dialogue boxes, how's the writing that is there?

There's plenty of NPCs. Most of them give one-off quests or hints, or some world flavor. Some of them are recurring characters on adventures of their own.

There is some lore, and I'm sure there's some kind of story going on, I'm just early enough that I don't know what it is yet. This isn't like Dragon Quest 3 where they tell you from the get-go that you're out to kill Baramos; you're just looking for Adventure, and there's probably a very big one to be found. I know there is a final boss because apparently the developer is considering adding New Game+ in a future patch. Someone who's gone farther could probably tell you more.

 

[Kalir]

I fucking love the way they designed the Rogue in this game. See, stealth in games is always an iffy business, but the threat system they have in place (and that lots of games already do) already has a solution in place: are you the teammate with the lowest threat level to the target? Congrats, you're stealthy enough to backstab! It's profoundly elegant and I love it.

 

[Kazin]

I beat Wizardry last night and this morning thought what the heck, I'll give this a shot and holy shit is it addicting

Unlocked Fencer before work lol

 

[Kirin]

This looks like “what if Minecraft worked on RPG mechanics”. Which once it’s said out loud seems like a totally obvious idea for someone to go for.

 

[Kazin]

There's no mining, though (at least as far as I'm aware of). It just kinda looks like it, to be clear.

 

[Mogri]

They make good use of 3D space.

 

[Kirin]

Yeah I was mostly talking about using the aesthetics and physical layout of Minecraft in another genre which, again, I’m surprised we haven’t seen even more of given it’s ubiquitous popularity and the fact that it lets you build cool environments without a lot of graphics/modeling work. I suspect that as the generation who grew up on Minecraft ages into development work we’ll see a lot more of this kind of thing.

 

[Torzelbaum]

The blocks in Crystal Project seem a lot less pixelly to me than the ones in Minecraft.

 

[Kazin]

The graphics are pretty pleasing, though, yeah, playing it, I can't help but be reminded of Minecraft.

Played a little bit more on my lunch. I'm hoping to get some better threat management soon, because my black mage (or whatever it's called) can do a TON of damage, but accrues a lot of threat lol. I can currently only Taunt one enemy with my tank.

 

[Kalir]

Threat is only one way to mitigate harm to your damage dealers, and sometimes you just have to accept that damage dealers in this will get hit. There's a job you get early on that's a great next step for Wizard that gives them some good damage-mitigation debuffs.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I'll definitely have my eye on this for the inevitable Switch port

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, the dev has said he wants to port it to Switch, but has no plans currently:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1512240603567898624

(and yes, it runs beautifully on Steam Deck, no Proton compatibility required, even. Just install it and go)

 

[Bongo]

The only thing this game has in common with Minecraft is voxels. There are lots of voxel games. This one has neither mining nor crafting, and the world is finite, handmade, and immutable, not procedurally generated.

 

[Mogri]

Like Minecraft, this game has a large number of caves.

 

[YangusKhan]

I'll likely pick this up when I get a Steamdeck

 

[Kazin]

Does anyone know if you get permanent boosted stats of some type if you master a class, similar to Final Fantasy V? I mastered Warrior and Rogue last night, and when I switched my Rogue to Fencer, she still seemed like the fastest character, though maybe Fencer is just fast, too.

I'm surprised how much I enjoy bouncing around exploring in this game. Not being penalized in any way if you fall into water is lovely, too.

 

[Kalir]

The reward for mastering a class is that you can get a prize from that class' master when you find them.

As far as stats go: while each class has their own individual stat modifiers, every XP level you gain as a class will give stat growths that largely fit that class, which are viewable when you're changing or respeccing. Rogue and Fencer are both fast classes, though.

 

[Kazin]

There is a gender change facility in this game, and you get an achievement for changing the gender of at least one of your characters. That, uh, kinda rules? I love this game (and I'm going to get that achievement as soon as I can afford it lol).

 

[Kazin]

This one has neither mining nor crafting

There is a little bit of crafting, in a very simple way, actually. It's a decent number of hours in, though.

Having unlocked some more classes, the battle system is really coming together, and I really appreciate the design of these classes. A lot of them really do integrate well, and you can really tweak your builds with equipment. This game is excellent, y'all.

 

[Mogri]

Someone joked about this game having a ten-hour demo. I'm not sure that's true, but I can tell you I've logged nearly five hours without figuring out where it ends.

The RPG elements of this game are good, but the exploration is excellent. My only gripe is that I wish the game had a rewind button for when you miss a jump.

 

[Mogri]

At the time of the previous post, I thought I had a good idea where the demo would end. Now, I'm at six hours, and I've just unlocked like six new areas.

I'm... not convinced this is a demo anymore


edit: 7 hours in, I found my first paywall at Salmon Cave, and given the number of sequence breaks in the game, I'm not fully convinced it can't be bypassed

 

[Mogri]

Rolled credits on the demo at 9.5 hours (upon acquiring the Quintar Flute), but that item unlocks a whole bunch of stuff you can do even within the demo.

 

[Mogri]

Crystal Project continues to be basically everything I want from a video game. I can't recommend this enough to anyone who likes the idea of going on an adventure.

 

[JBear]

So, I can say this now that I've tried this game and am absolutely enthralled by it: I found the trailer videos on the Steam page absolutely repellant. I don't know what it is, but something about the voxels and the floaty physics just rubbed me extremely wrong, so when it was first recommended to me I took one look and then decided it wasn't for me. And then someone else recommended it to me. And then someone else again. And finally it hit critical mass, and the demo was apparently giant, so I said "fuck it" and tried it anyway and now I am extremely in love. So to anyone who, like me, think they might be interested but don't care for how it looks, I encourage you to try out the massive free demo anyway, and perhaps you'll be similarly smitten. And as everyone has noted, be aware that even though it wears the skin of a survival crafting game (which I generally don't care for), it's not one.

Oh, also, I haven't seen this mentioned by anyone else, so I just want to note that the game this reminds me most of is actually Alundra (not the combat, obviously, but the platforming). A lot of trying to judge heights and differences in 2D to make jumps. Perhaps also shades of the platforming/puzzle-solving of CrossCode's outdoor areas.