Cryptark

2D sci-fi shooter with roguelike elements, in which you play as a mercenary assaulting randomly generated spaceships, planning your equipment and tactics to destroy their core and claim your reward
✅Very enjoyable and well-executed shooting system
✅Lots of weapons (machine guns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, energy weapons, etc.)
✅Good graphics
✅Huge dose of strategy means each boarding requires a precise attack plan—first, you identify the most dangerous systems, then systematically destroy them. + Large variety of enemies
✅Upgrade system, e.g., the equipment system, allows you to create a weapon set tailored to your preferred playstyle
✅ You can play with a friend, but only if you're on the same computer
❌No multiplayer mode
❌Difficult economy and unforgiving level randomness
❌Difficulty balance at times unbalanced
❌Too high a price for the game's content
✅✅ Verdict: Very Bad , Bad , Average , Decent , Good , Very Good (Rating scale for tested games)
If you have any questions about my reviews, feel free to ask. I'm happy to answer them. All reviews are my own!! Best regards, King Viking Bezimienny, Polish Game Reviewer

CRYPTARK is one of the games I picked up while cleaning the "trash" catalogue in my Steam library. That catalogue is for games I didn't mean to play, for different reasons. Whilst I couldn't be bothered to review most of the ones I (begrudgingly) decided to play - as to clean my games library - CRYPTARK is, in fact, good! Plus, considering that I've got it for free, even greater. Fun game loop, well thought out game design, pretty polished. Recommended!

It's fun. It's really fun when you get the best weapons during the run. There is one annoying thing about this game, and that's the enemies that can go through walls. If they game enemies followed the same laws of gameplay as you it wouldn't be that annoying. But the ones that go through walls build up to a point where you sometimes can't get back into the ship to do your mission. Other than that.... Still a fun game!

Very nice and simple game. Playing with a controller is a little weird, but you get used to it.
My only issue with it is the front. It is hard to read on Steam Deck’s screen.

The best part is how it rewards smart planning as much as reflexes. Every run is a mix of risk and improvisation, a perfect blend of tactics and chaos. The visuals are cool, figuring out how to get specific items and goals works well, overall it is a decent rogue like that does not hold your hand.

Not bad of a game, fun, very challenging, and Jerma.....

And a tip use keyboard and mouse for some reason controller pov when scouting is smaller compare to left shift on a keyboard and mouse.

It’s not a bad game, but it doesn’t really offer anything for me personally. I understand that roguelites? are meant to be challenging, but it feels difficult right from the very early stages, and in my opinion there isn’t a strong enough progression or reward system to encourage repeated play. The game aims to let you create more optimal loadouts through modules and artifacts, but it doesn’t quite deliver a real sense of progression. Enabling easy mode brings the difficulty down to a more reasonable level, though.
However, new missions and different modes don’t go much beyond repeating the same structure. From this perspective, I can say again that it didn’t quite click for me. I also couldn’t fully get used to the controls and UI integration—sometimes it feels like it expects keyboard input, other times mouse, which breaks the flow a bit.
That said, elements like the atmosphere and overall design are genuinely nice. From its own perspective, it doesn’t really have any major flaws or technical issues. That’s why I still wanted to leave a positive review.