CrossCode

This game is the perfect RPG. This review shows how strongly I feel about it.

CrossCode is a game that not many people have heard of. It’s a game by a small group of German developers that has a small following of fans. I would have never heard of the game, if not for one of my friends showing it to me. After years of being in early access, the full game was released in September of 2018, and it was gifted to me about a month later.

After playing through the game over a one month period, I looked back and considered my thoughts on the game as a whole. And my conclusion was that CrossCode is, by all means, a masterpiece, and one of the games that has left the biggest impact on my philosophy of good game design. Here's why.

I usually don’t like to get into the stories of games, so that anyone who reads these reviews won’t get heavily spoiled in case they haven’t played the game before. But I want to briefly mention CrossCode’s world. At first glance it seems like the very overdone “we’re stuck in the video game, and if you die in the game you die in real life” trope, but it’s actually very different. It’s true that the real-life game CrossCode takes place inside the fictional game CrossWorlds, but the characters are not stuck inside CrossWorlds, and they are also safe from dying. The story of the game CrossCode actually has very little to do with the game CrossWorlds. CrossWorlds is only the setting for the game CrossCode. I think this is a very clever way to make a video game, because the developers can make characters have dialogue that is intentionally fourth wall-breaking, but it doesn’t actually break the fourth wall because the game takes place inside a game. The game can be aware of itself being a game, but still without breaking the fourth wall. I will always praise this aspect of CrossCode.

CrossCode is one of the largest and longest indie games I’ve ever played. It has a solid 40 hours in the game, and that doesn’t even include the DLC section, which is also huge. From my first time playing, I was instantly enthralled by all of its mechanics, and how well they tie into each other. The gameplay mechanics even tie into the game’s story. Just controlling the game felt perfect, like I always knew exactly what I was doing, even in the most chaotic moments. I feel that CrossCode’s gameplay has been refined to the point of mastery, and that’s not just because I’ve been playing it for so long and I’m good at the controls. From day one, I felt like I had mastered it all. It goes to show what 7 years of love and development can do for a game.

I haven’t even gotten to the real heart of CrossCode yet. The game truly shines when it comes to puzzles. CrossCode is all about puzzles. Literally everything is a puzzle. Combat is puzzles, platforming is puzzles, the story is a puzzle, and even the puzzles are puzzles. Every enemy has crazy defense until you stun it by doing a simple quick puzzle. Stunning an enemy is called a break. And every single enemy has a unique puzzle to break it. And there are over 100 different enemies, and that doesn’t even include the bosses. CrossCode actually blurs the line between platforming and puzzles. The graphics are all 2D, but every room actually has 3 dimensions. Every room has multiple layers of height that can be reached by the player by jumping up one layer at a time. Searching for the path to get to the next layer is a puzzle outright. Sometimes you have to do timed puzzles to reach the other side of a room, all while staying on the same layer, and in one section of the DLC, you have to make a path around the entire area, through multiple rooms, to get to one chest. That path is so long that the in-game characters will complain about how long it is while you’re running on it. Because everything is a puzzle, from the combat to the travelling, you may think that it gets exhausting after a while. But CrossCode always delivers a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment every time you see the path opening before you, every time you hear that sound effect that signals you got a break on an enemy.

The parts where CrossCode shines its brightest is in the dungeons. There are plenty of dungeons in the game, and all of them are unique and special in their own way. Through the progression of the game, you always loosely know what to expect from a dungeon. But, of course, what you can’t expect is how the puzzles work. CrossCode’s dungeons show the developers’ absolute mastery of game design. They teach you everything you need to know, then give them a slew of problems, give them all the tools they need to complete those problems, and let the player go wild. CrossCode lets the player learn by experimenting. Each dungeon has its own set of unique puzzle elements that interact with the player’s moveset differently. The player only ever has six options they can do. Move around, melee, projectile, dash, guard, and special. The dungeons really only focus on one of these moves: the projectile. The player’s projectile can be fired rapidly, or it can be charged. A charged projectile will bounce off walls a few times, and then disappear. The dungeons’ puzzle elements all interact with the projectile differently. It could just be a switch that the player has to bounce their projectile at a specific angle to hit a switch, or shoot a fire projectile to melt some ice, or shoot an ice projectile to freeze water, or send an orb of electricity travelling across a wall to power a faraway switch, or sending shockwaves through walls to activate something on the other side. Each dungeon has dozens of these puzzle rooms that teach you all about a specific ability you have, and then, at the end of the dungeon, is a massive room where you combine everything you’ve learned in that dungeon. Those rooms are always my favorite rooms to conquer. You have to be quick, know exactly what to do next, and when to do it. Once you beat those challenging rooms, you get an amazing feeling of released tension that makes me crack a grin every time.

I remember when I first played CrossCode, within the first 10 minutes, I thought, “This is exactly the type of game I want to make.” CrossCode is an absolute masterpiece, and is definitely within my top 5 games. I wish every game was like CrossCode.