Crystalfall

Crystalfall is a hack 'n' slash action RPG built on the loot-treadmill template: pick a class, clear randomized dungeons, and grind an endgame the developers describe as endless. The setting is the one distinguishing hook — a world wrecked by an asteroid impact, populated by steampunk enemies, which is a more specific look than the generic high-fantasy dungeons this genre usually reaches for. The classes lean into it too: you play a hybrid mutant, with lion-like Knights, fox-like Gunners and crow-like Technomancers among the options.

The structural promise is procedural skills rather than a fixed skill tree, which is the part worth watching: if builds genuinely recombine, the randomized dungeons have something to feed. If they don't, procedural generation on its own tends to produce variety of layout without variety of decision, and the endless endgame becomes repetition rather than progression. Nothing in the published material settles which way it lands.

The people and the money behind it are on record, which is more than most entries in this category manage. It is made by Cold River Games, a studio in Umeå, Sweden, which raised $2 million to build it in a round led by Beam Investments with the Avalanche Foundation and CoinFund also participating. The blockchain side follows that money: the plan is to use Beam, the Avalanche subnet built for games, to record ownership of items held as NFTs — and the studio has been clear that the Web3 layer is optional and not yet fully specified. Treat it as a free-to-play PC action RPG with an ownership layer bolted alongside, not as a game whose economy is the point.

It suits players who already enjoy repeat-run loot grinding and want a less conventional art direction. Anyone looking for authored story or hand-built level design should look elsewhere.