Crafty Survivor is an action roguelite in Early Access that is similar toVampire Survivors. You mow down and evade waves of enemies as you get steadily get more powerful, gaining a customizable suite of evolving abilities.
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You play as a cast of crafters who utilize their crafts to fight their enemies with skills like cooking, textiles, and sculpting. Like most roguelite games, there isn’t much of a tutorial, and while a lot of it is intuitive, there are some things that’ll snag you.
8Use A Controller
Regardless of how you deploy your attacks, you manually aim almost all your abilities, essentially making this game a twin-stick shooter, which is much easier to play with a controller. If you have the technology, you can save yourself a lot of wrist strain from micro-managing your movements to dodge between enemies.
It’s also more ergonomic to use the stick-and-button method of moving and firing attacks over trying to handle the WASD keys and the keys that fire your attacks with the same hand.
7You Can Control Casting Styles
Though almost all the abilities are manually aimed, you’re able to choose to make individual abilities auto-cast or manual cast, with the latter being the default. Abilities set to auto-cast will fire whenever they are available, usually in the direction of the target reticle or mouse cursor.
You should decide whether an ability should be auto or manual on a case-by-case basis, erring towards the latter. Some abilities have long cooldowns, can be used as a part of a combo, or should be reserved for the right moment. In general, you should really only have the default attack on auto, and even then, this isn’t a good idea for the Lumberjack, who can charge his main attack and hold it.
6Go Savory Or Sweet With The Chef
The Chef benefits from seasoning his foes before killing them, gaining a stack of Bistro every time he does so, and at 20 Bistro stacks, he can unleash a powerful attack that renders him invincible for its duration.
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For maximum efficiency, you shouldpick savory (Spiced and Roasted) or sweet (Frosted and Candied)when filling out his kit. There’s no reason to mix them up, and you’re diluting the power of your moves if you do. You have to buff fewer moves if you focus on one or the other, increasing the amount of power you can put into your existing skills instead.
5Don’t Forget Your Village
Though you might be having fun clearing waves of enemies, don’t forget to return to your village once in a while, especially if you find the game getting difficult. It’s easy to forget, since even on a loss the game doesn’t prompt you to return there.
Even after you unlock all the characters in the village (Seamstress and Sculptor), you’ll still want to frequent it since repairing and improving the buildingsgive you meta-rewardsthat increase your effectiveness on the battlefield.
4The Sculptor Is Stronger Than He Seems
At first glance, the Sculptor can seem weak and unintuitive to the point of feeling like a joke character. His starter attack has little range, damage, or knockback and his abilities require a lot of setup that doesn’t always pay off.
However, if you work on him, he is actually quite powerful and satisfying to play as – he’s able to hold the map in ways that the other characters can’t. The key is to master his early game by using good positioning to hit enemies with the dust from his sculptures.
Once you’ve got the early game down, you’ll be able to put some real power into his statues. If you’re having some trouble with this, put points into his Protection Idol ability, which gives you powerful defensive bonuses.
3Look Out For Bonuses On The World Map
If you ever find yourself short on materials for your next building upgrade (or even if you don’t), look on the stage select map for blue sparkles. Levels with this graphical flourish will give you some kind of bonus, usually an increased chance of whatever drops on that stage or extra gold.
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Where these bonuses are and what they give you change every time you attempt a level, so be sure that you’re not wanting for anything before you start your next stage.
2The Seamstress Is Imprecise
Perhaps the most kinetic of all the crafters, the Seamstress zips around the battlefield, cutting down weaker foes with ease, even before she starts getting points in abilities.
One of her coolest abilities plays into that archetype even more, but unfortunately, it’s difficult to use, because her aim is imprecise. She has an ability where she throws out a hook, and when it catches on one of her ground needles (usually produced by your dash), she zips towards it, harming all enemies in her path.
There’s a slight deviation between where you aim the ability and where she fires it, leading the ability to be unreliable unless you’ve saturated the battlefield with ground needles. A shame, because this playstyle is otherwise spectacular to behold.
1Lumberjack And Decoration Trees Are Different
Likely the last character you unlock, the Lumberjack has some interesting mechanical differences from the other crafters. He is the only character who has a pet, the only one witha charged swing, and the only one who has a unique resource that periodically spawns on the field.
Natural to his trade, any stage the Lumberjack plays in will spawn trees that you may chop down and gain Lumber from. The problem is, there are also trees that are part of the level, sometimes sporting a fruit to heal you or a hive to send wasps at you. These trees are not harvestable by the Lumberjack. Though they look similar, down to the coloration, the important thing to keep in mind is that Lumberjack trees are skinnier than their decorative counterparts.
