Coin Crypt is quite weird, it’s one of these games where your main resource isn’t something you’d usually expect to use as-is. In Coin Crypt, your special moves and your money are one and the same, you fight with coins that you collect in chests and on enemies. I’ve been a bit confused with it, and the lack of help on some systems made me not use them, but I had some fun with it, especially after I’ve figured it out.
The big deal with CC is how you manage to pick coins and use them judiciously. As you walk around and loot chests for coinage, you need to really think about what you’re doing. Picking too many healing coins will make you unable to attack, picking highest value coins will sometime leave you defenceless. Balancing that out with the need to get money to buy items and unlock new characters, it’s a nice idea for a roguelike. My default strategy was always to get all the attacking coins I could get and that worked out okay, I’m not saying that the other types were useless, but for me they were less useful and I wish I would’ve found more situations where just attacking wasn’t enough
The battle system is weird, you pick coins, they have ‘casting times’ and then they are used. Some deal damage, some heal you, some put up shields, some have other effects that last for a while. Sometimes you pick coin stacks and they are all used at once, magnifying their powers. You can also re-pick your hand if needed. I have a few issues with the battle system; First of all, I’m not sure why it needs to be real time, enemies attack you after a while, but why do that? It would work as well if it was completely turn based, everything has a casting time, after all. Second, most of the tooltips aren’t telling me what the effects on me or my enemies actually means. These shields last for ‘10’, but it’s not seconds, so what is it? And how much defence do I have with that shield? Third, I wish you could use healing coins outside of battle to heal you, it’s a bit frustrating to be down to 1 hp without any way to get back up before the next fight, and then just die.These issues are more annoyances than anything, but as combat is a large part of this game, it piles up over time.
On the overworld, you can encounter chests, locked doors, shrines, shops and many other weird things (like a computer). The shops are pretty straightforward (although I’m not a fan of most of the items you can buy, they all seem uninteresting except getting more coins or things like that) and the doors are unlocked by using keys you find as coins here and there. I’m confused by the other things, the shrines, the glowy pieces of floor, they just proclaim what they are without any explanations, they let you give them all of your money if you want, and then sometimes nothing happens. Since money is everything in this game, why not help the player a bit more with more information? Tell me that if I give this shrine 200$ I’ll get more attack, or something. I never figured out what these did.
Classes aren’t created equal, I had the best run with an old guy that couldn’t stack his coins but picked up new hands instantly and the hermit - picks up more coins, but they’re not worth any money. Some classes seem crazy difficult, like the 1-hp archer or the ghost that drops coins continuously. Buying classes and trying them out is always a fun thing in a roguelike and I feel like Coin Crypt did a good thing with theirs. The coins themselves are interesting too, stealing coins, healing and lowering your own defense, coins that just hurt you - and are worth negative money - heals, heals over time, various buffs and debuffs… I wish the game was more descriptive in all places, maybe it would’ve been easier for me to get further than I did, which I don’t feel was very far, without knowing how far I could ever go.
