EMPTY SHELL: Ever played Teleglitch? Probably not. But if you have? Well, then, you've played this.

EMPTY SHELL is pretty good, if kinda derivative of Teleglitch. I think the biggest things separating the two are the very limited inventory and its look. The inventory makes you choose carefully what kind of guns you'll be bringing along for the ride as both the weapon and its ammo take up precious inventory space. There's a lot of management and hard choices you're going to have to make along the way, especially early on. Weirdly enough, you will likely not suffer from a lack of ammunition, though. By my end, I had almost two thousand bullets just sitting there. That's a lot.
The aesthetic choices are probably (definitely) divisive. I see people in the Steam reviews complain about it and I cannot blame them. I just beat Cryptmaster which also went for the monochromatic look, but I find it far less jarring here. Probably partially because of the whole “CRT-look” with the scanlines and visual glitches. Combined with those, the black and white is practically to be expected. But, that said, it's definitely a personal preference. I can see it bothering a lot of people (and it clearly does).

The story isn't good. You're a randomized “volunteer” being sent to an island to stop it from spreading monsters. You'll find notes scattered around that answer almost nothing and largely just remind you that this monster-infested island is, indeed, quite bizarre.
Know what was oddly effective? Giving your faceless, rotating protagonists names, ages, and heights. For some reason that made me care about them. My first survivor was a 50 year old man who did his damnedest yet perished to some annoying freaks pretty early. My second, Kenzo Takahashi, was a 22 year old manlet who brought that Napoleonic rage to the front lines and made it the whole rest of the way. It took him two full days and he didn't eat nor sleep. His shitty-yet-reliable starter pistol was holstered on his side the entire ride. Kenzo was witnessed.

The strongest aspect is the gameplay, which is quite tight. The guns feel and sound good. A swarm of enemies emerging from a darkened door will cause you to panic then run-and-gun. You have a dodge-roll with i-frames and a stamina bar and you'll be diving like mad to dodge some of these bastards (“Scissors” are hell incarnate). If you want exploration with hectic firefights, this is a game for you.
There are some minor glitches, like radios continuing to play looping jams after you drop them without turning them off or flashlight drones that are “equipped” yet no where to be found after dropping something else, forcing you to unequip and re-equip them. It's annoying when it happens but it's not game breaking. I'm also not a fan of traversing some of the levels when their randomized design is just a long, straight line yet you forgot to check a room back at the entrance; but maybe that's on me.

There's a new game plus mode that I may try out sometime, but I managed to beat this in one sitting and I think I'll take a break from it for now. I'm glad I gave it a go for the $9.59 asking price (at the time).

I recommend EMPTY SHELL, especially if you can get it for even cheaper than I did.

Cryptmaster: I beat this one, but only after running out of steam yet stubbornly persevering. It's a bummer, too, because I think Cryptmaster has a really strong opening -- but within 20 minutes you've seen just about everything you'll see across the next dozen hours.

I liked the premise of both its puzzles and progression. In order to learn more moves in combat, you needed to find “letters” that would fill in blanks on the bottom of your screen. Guess the word as early as you can and you either learn a new move or some backstory, which is essentially experience that once enough is garnered the character gains another hitpoint. Advanced combat moves require souls, and the fun way of getting those is by solving riddles you'll encounter on the journey.
This was all good, but you'll get this before you even finish the tutorial area. It's literally all in the demo of the game. New levels and areas hardly even look very different thanks to the game's achromatic visual style which definitely becomes grating (you can add some color in the options but it's clearly “wrong”, if that makes sense). Everyone you meet is kind of annoying and you want to spend as little time with them as possible. Sure: when asked to defile a statue and you type in “masturbate” and it works, you'll probably laugh a bit. “Shit” even makes a fart sound and you can do it any time. That's neat, but is it really going to keep you around? It probably shouldn't.

I guess my first suggestion for improvement would be to drastically shorten the game as I don't think there's enough going on here to justify its length. I wish the “letters” system worked a bit faster as by the time I beat the game, I don't think I even had half of any characters' total vocab unlocked – and this was with me solving almost every single riddle tossed my way (for more letters, combat only gives you a measly one as loot). I also wish the attack cooldown was shorter on my characters as a lot of the combat was just me sitting there waiting out a clock.
Lots and lots of work went into this game and it shows: the number of words you can type and have the Cryptmaster respond to is shocking, but was it needed? I don't think so. Sometimes it was nice, like when one time I said “rivers” but the intended answer was “water”, the game gave it to me. Cryptmaster is actually quite forgiving in its combat, too, as enemies won't respawn in challenging locations and you can go back to an altar (which revives/heals) at any time with a teleport. The Cryptmaster will also offer to solve riddles for you if you're obviously stuck.

I liked it until I didn't yet played on anyways and I regret that choice. I wish I just played the demo and forgot about trying this.
I do not recommend Cryptmaster. It's a cool concept but it definitely drags on too long and it's an adventure more likely to reward you with a headache than anything else.