Cryptark is a Rogue-lite Twin Stick Shooter in a zero gravity space setting. You play the role of a pioneer (human sized mech suit) pilot working on a salvage contract provided by some shadowy G-men to extract an undisclosed item from the "Cyrptark", the derelict flagship of a long unmanned ghost fleet. The voice acting, script, music, and various other artistic production values make for a rather fun roleplaying experience. I often times felt myself being charmed by the assessments for recovered artifacts provided by the support crew, or the praise the contractors would provide if I managed to finish a level ahead of the deadline. The game also does a vey good job of making you feel like a mech pilot for a salvage company who is doing some possibly shady business for unkown reasons. I especially enjoy the bits of detail like when you equip a nuclear rocket, and the engineer on you staff mentions how while the government condemns the use of such armaments, you and your crew are just some blue collar workers out in space who can use nukes as much as they want.

The game has a Campaign (Singleplayer and Co-op), Rogue mode, and, upon completion of both, Cryptark Extraction. In the Campaign you go through 5 waves of ships in the fleet (each time with a choice of 4 ships from which you choose to board for the wave), before arriving at the Cryptark. Upon reviewing what class, level, systems, and reward objectives each ship has and making your choice, you choose what weapons and items you will fill your slots with, how much ammo you will bring, and how much armor you will set for your suit's limit. all of these expend money, as does dying or using repair or ammo stations abord the derelicts. This expenditure is remedied by neutralizing ships, doing so before the timetable set by your contractors, and by finishing while following certain guidlines (max hit points of 3, max loadout cost of 45K, don't trip alarms, keep the armour system, etc.).
Rogue mode has you deploying with a fixed loadout, picking up and exchanging different weapons and items from within the ship, not having any objectives or monetary system, automatically going into a ship in each wave, and carrying over your inventory and health to the next ship, as well as perma-death. Anyone who is a fan of rogue-likes, or any game that makes you be careful or thoughtful with inventory or long term decisions will very much enjoy Rogue mode.

Cryptark is a fun and frenetic twin stick shooter rogue-lite, and for the most part operates rather well on that front. There is a wide range of weapon types, and various models for each type, though many of the weapon categories, such as grenades, machine guns, and melee weapons, have a few very apparent supperior models. Aside from your default selection, more items and weapons can be unlocked/picked up throughout the derelict ships. The enemy types are varied and distinct, enough so to force you to make wise choices on what weapons you are pairing. Too many high power, low ammo weapons like grenades, cannons, and rockets and you will have a hard time hitting the small, swarming, and melee type enemies, and well as not having enough ammo to spread arround. Concetrate too much on high ammo, high rate of fire, low DPS weapons, and you will struggle against enemies who frequently use shields, or have massive health pools and powerful weapons.
Alongside the Gunplay and money management, Cryptark also provides a decent level of strategic and tactical decision making with the ship systems. Each ship in Cryptark has been devoid of life for millions of years, but the AI systems are still running. In order to beat each level you must destroy the Central AI Core, which disables all the drones and systems. To do this, you must first destroy the Shield system protecting the AI Core, and will likely have to destroy others along the way as well. Destroying the factories prevents the continued spawning of drones, disabling armour systems removes the extra health it provides to drones, destroying the swapping system will prevent the systems from continuously changing location, destroying the repair system stops the previously destroyed systems form coming back, etc. All of this provides for a fast paced and thoughtful game experiences.

While this game is quite fun, and a must for any fan of resource/equipment management heavy games, as well as games that reward forthought and long-term planning, there are a few drawbacks that may very well sour the experience for the player.
The first complant, and one that is shared by many people who play this game, is the camera. Cryptark is a more or less top down shooter, with enemies coming from all over the place, and due to alarms causing many enemies to rush to your location, and factories causing some enemies to portal in, you can often times be rushed and need to quickly look this way and that way in a split second. Unfortunately, the default camera is too close-in on your character and dosen't provide enough distance. While you can zoom out the camera, it requires holding down another key, with no options to change your camera closeness or edit the controls so that the zoom out key is toggled, rather than held.
Another problem with the camera and scope of the game is that you end up staring at the minimap constantly, as well as frequently looking at the full map. While this isn't too much of a problem, there is the addition of constantly scrolling and changing the zoom when you go into the full map, as it often resets.
The third problem with the game, and the final visual problem, is some of the visual direction. While I have gotten used to it, the semi-Giegeresque art design, as well as the enemy design, color schemes, and layout can make it initialy very difficult to tell what is an enemy, an envirornmental hazard, a physics object, or just a part of the architecture.
The fourth and final problem I have with the game is it's size and length. Rogue-likes are all about replay value, yet this game has very little. It takes a few hours to get used to, after which point you can go through the campaign, Rogue mode, and Cryptark extraction all in about 16 hours. After that, al there really is to do is get all 27 artifacts, many of which you will have already gotten by this point. While there are 7 suits that you can choose from, each with seperate armor values, default loadouts, in-built passive abilities (which can be picked up in Rogue mode), and single unique power. This being said, the default suit is the second best, with most of the rest being less good or even terrible, and quickly unlocked with the artifacts that you pick up. The best suit, the Rook, has an overpowered shield ability that can be used for griefing, and some of the suits have such low armor, poor default loadouts, and/or less useful/less easy to use powers that they only seem good for setting a challeng upon yourself to get through with their inferior capabilites.

If you like any of these:

• Games that require some thought put into your actions
  
• Resoure/invetory/equipment managemet
  
• Fast-paced shooters with good weapon, enemy, and tactics varieties

And you can deal with these:

• Short games
  
• A bit too close of a camera
  
• Map systems and visuals that could use a bit of improvement

then this game is probably worth a purchase, and certainly worth buying on sale.