Cramped Room of Death Review: Walk Softly and Carry a Big Spear

Cramped Room of Death begins with our intrepid adventurer Lance eating too much with his friends and falling into a food coma. While comatose, the nefarious Vizardians break in and steal all his weapons and hard-earned treasure. It’s a relatable introduction to the game: who hasn’t suffered the consequences of an ill-advised gut-busting meal? Certainly not I, said the handsome writer who never lies.

As if to challenge him, the only item that remains is a long spear. Lance equips his trusty spear and ventures off to the catacombs to best the foes who have stolen his treasure. “Foe” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, though, because the Vizardians are all fragile skeletons that, despite their treachery, seem to enjoy taunting adventurers and getting speared to death (again). As we’ll see shortly, the Vizardians don’t put up much of a fight, but their lack of strength belies their ability to scheme.

The Paradox of the Spear

At its core, Cramped Room of Death is a straightforward action puzzler. The goal is simple: defeat all the enemies in the room to open the door and escape. The gameplay is equally simple: you move in the cardinal directions, attack, and rotate Lance as necessary. Enemies always remain stationary and only take a single hit to kill—if you can manage to reach them.

You see, there’s a reason the Vizardians left a spear behind for Lance. As the game’s name suggests, each room is cramped and, if you’re unwise, full of death. Lance’s spear has a habit of getting stuck on everything, and I mean everything. The walls, hazards, enemies…everything. Lance’s maneuverability is severely impacted by the spear’s length. The key to beating each room isn’t so much about killing the enemies but understanding how to reach them in the first place.

And that’s what makes Cramped Room of Death such a brilliant little puzzler. The spear is a delightfully paradoxical mechanic. It’s a liability and a hindrance, but its limitations also create engaging situations in which you’ll use those exact limitations in unexpected ways to solve each room.

Crushed, Stabbed, and Slashed to Death

Lance’s impenetrable spear is always one space in front of him. Killing an enemy is as simple as pushing your spear into them. There are only a few enemies, but each one requires careful consideration. Skeletons will just stand there, never attacking. Swordsmen will slash you if you end up next to them. Archers will attack you from any distance if you cross their line of sight. Spearmen attack just like you do, and the sickle-wielding Vizardians can hit anything in any space around them.

While the walls aren’t your friend, the floors aren’t either. Holes, breakable floors, and spike traps further complicate matters. You can also get your spear stuck in iron grates, which forces you to back out of them to move again. Oh, and the archers can shoot through those grates, too, so getting stuck in one at all can immediately get you killed.

Death Rooms Galore

Cramped Room of Death is broken up into five worlds with a total of 182 levels, and each world introduces a new hazard. These include hazards that can only be pushed with your spear or your body, slippery floors, and switches that drop weights to smash you. Each world also has several levels that are hidden in other levels. These hidden entrances aren’t too hard to spot once you know what you’re looking for, but they can be extremely difficult to access. Beating a hidden level unlocks a new skin for Lance. Nothing fancy, but these sections are especially challenging.

While the separate ingredients that make up Cramped Room of Death aren’t anything special, the game comes alive when these ingredients are combined. To solve each room, you have to figure out how to not only navigate each room but also how to approach each enemy in the correct position while also avoiding floor traps and other hazards. I’m unsure if there’s more than one way to clear each room, but given all the different variables in play, I imagine there are.

Let’s Get Stuck

I spoke earlier about the spear’s paradoxical mechanics. What I mean by that, now that I’ve fully fleshed out the gameplay, is sometimes you’ll want to get stuck on things. This is especially true of the levels with slippery floors. You’ll need the spear to catch you on enemies so that you can maneuver through the room. And you won’t always want to kill an enemy as soon as you can either. Sometimes, you’ll need specific enemies to block other enemies, especially archers, from shooting you. And, sometimes, the first enemy you kill is the one right next to the exit, and then you have to work your way back through the room again to kill everyone else.

This paradoxical nature extends to hazards as well. They’ll block you, crush you to death, and force you to restart, but they’ll also block enemies from killing you. The spearmen require careful consideration in this regard. The same hazards that block you are the same hazards you’ll use to block them. You can’t walk right up to them and kill them because they’ll kill you first. You have to block them with hazards to prevent them from rotating. Once they’re stuck, they’re no longer a threat.

Just Restart (Again)

Cramped Room of Death is challenging but also forgiving. There are no lives and no timer. You can also reset your most recent move with the press of a button, all the way back to start if you like. There’s no penalty for doing so either. Each Vizardian also drops a coin when defeated. You can spend five coins on a key that reduces the required number of room kills by one. If you have enough coins, you can buy enough keys to open the door without killing anyone if you want. Coins are also for buying unlocked skins.

While the key system gives you a little flexibility in beating a difficult room if there are enemies you can’t figure out how to defeat, it still won’t help you reach the door itself. And sometimes, that’s the actual challenge—not the enemies but the room. There are even rooms that don’t have any enemies, which means you’ll get no help whatsoever there. I only needed to use keys a few times in the last world. I’d like to say it’s because I’m good, but I know I stumbled across the solution more than a few times.

Move, Stab, Rotate, Repeat

While Cramped Room of Death excels at what it does, I did find myself wanting…more. There’s only a handful of enemies and while each world introduces a new hazard, each world is so long that they tend to run out of steam by the time you reach the end. The Sewer world’s 48 levels of swamp-sliding madness wore out its welcome for me about halfway through. Each level in each world is a variation of that world’s mechanics, so there aren’t any standout levels either. That’s not to say there are bad levels because there aren’t, but none are particularly noteworthy either. With so many levels in each world, they all tend to run together. More enemies, more mechanics, and more worlds would have helped liven things up a bit. In the same vein, setting the entire game in the catacombs means there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the graphics or soundtrack. It all fits, it’s all fine, but…that’s it.

Death Is a Delight

Cramped Room of Death feels like a solid starting point for an excellent sequel. The spear mechanic brilliantly subverts what would otherwise be a standard puzzle experience. It’s easy to recommend to genre fans and those looking for something a little different. However, a little more variety would have made it a must-have. I don’t regret the 10+ hours I spent with it, though, and neither will you.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: Switch (reviewed), Steam; Publisher: Nicalis, Inc.; Developer: Hafiz Mohd Rozlan; Players: 1; Release Date: July 19, 2023; ESRB: E10+; MSRP: $14.99

Editor’s note: The publisher provided a review copy to Hey Poor Player.