Games like Hades have shown us that the afterlife can be just as good of a starting point for games as an endpoint. Dying is never really the end in games after all, and breaking out of the underworld rather than accepting your fate makes a lot of sense if it’s on the table. A new action RPG on Xbox Game Pass takes the end of its character’s life as the start of its adventure, with the added benefit of starring an adorable cat.
Crypt Custodian starts off with a rather grim premise. You play as a cat named Pluto who’s been hit by a car after escaping from your loving home and ended up in the afterlife. As soon as you arrive, you’re told you need to go before Kendra, a frog spirit who sorts the recently departed into the good and bad realms. Kendra decrees that Pluto has been a very good cat (as all cats are, even if they spend half their time being destructive little monsters like mine do), but there’s one catch. Upon arriving in the afterlife, Pluto found a broom that they had to use to smash pots that were blocking the way to Kendra’s office, and that one act dooms them forever. As a fitting punishment, Pluto is told to use that broom to serve forever as the janitor of the afterlife — the crypt custodian, if you will.
