JStove is back with another great read, and today he’s giving us his opinion on the most 40k video game ever made that you’ve never heard of.
Alright, Spikey Bits, it’s the Jstove here and today I’m talking about 40k video games.
Personally, I’m not a fan. We all loved Dawn of War, and we all loved DOW2, but DOW3 got hit-or-miss reviews. Personally, I didn’t even play it. I’m a hobbyist first, and when it comes to 40k I’d rather just paint my toy soldiers and play with dice.
However, it seems like hit-or-miss seems to be a theme with GW licensed games. Some of them are phenomenal, others forgettable. Anybody know where Eternal Crusade is at? That’s a rhetorical question, I don’t care.
The Most 40k game ever made that you’ve never heard of
That’s why today I’m talking about Cryptark by Alien Trap. No, they didn’t pay me to shill for them. Yes, I bought their game with my own money and I love it. So what is Cryptark? It already sounds like the Grim Darkest thing ever.
Grab some classic Metroid side-scroller exploration, throw in some HR Giger’s Alien, mummify them and turn them into cyborgs, set them adrift for millennia, then re-discover them on a SPACE HULK and go shoot the crap out of them with a powered exo-suit. Oh and also, the soundtrack would make a noise marine cream his pants. The ambiance is alien, powerful, with synthesized discordant notes. You can actually hear what walking down a dark corridor with your heart in your throat getting stalked by a Genestealer would sound like.
Cryptark is the most 40k game never produced with a 40k license. It’s the most beautiful, awesome little indie game that should have got a 40k license. You are a salvage crew with a nuclear payload of low-budget military hardware tasked with exploring space hulks and blowing up anything that fights back. It’s all the best parts of being a Rogue Trader and a Deathwing boarding party, with even more guns.
The best 40k art that isn’t 40k art
In addition to being fun as hell, the art of Cryptark is the most 40k art that was never 40k art. All the antagonists in the game are millennia-old skeletal puppets wired into the space hulk’s security network. At one point, they were probably living alien creatures, but after floating in dead space for thousands of years they are nothing but carrion sacks on cyborg puppet strings, defending a machine that has been idle and undisturbed for centuries. The art style is all the best part of evil technology- You can see notes of Dark Mechanicus, HR Giger, and Phyrexians from Magic. Cryptark is a visual bible of the Dark Mechanicus theme army from your nightmares.
The First person Space Hulk game you never got is finally coming
Not only is the sidescroller pixel art masterpiece Cryptark the most gorgeous and grimdark Space Hulk crawl you’ll ever play, but it’s being reborn and rebuilt to be an even eviler and immersive game. Alien Trap, the Dark Mechanicus geniuses behind Cryptark are working on GUNHEAD, the 3D first-person shooter version of Cryptark, and in the youtube video below, you can see what a terrifying and wonderful exploratory crawl through a space hulk should look like. Some of the textures and models look a little wonky and primitive, but already, even in this state, it looks like Ridley Scott went to Borderlands, had a nightmare, and made it a first-person shooter.
Get it now here: Cryptark by Alien Trap.
About the Author: Jack Stover
