The game
Crown Crawler is a dungeon crawler built for the wrist. The Digital Crown is the angle of your blade: turn it, and the sword sweeps across three lanes of kobolds, ghouls, orcs and worse.
For a thousand winters the Crown kept Ardmoor. Then the old mines breathed out an orc-host, Castle Ardmoor fell, and the gold the horde strewed through its halls drew something out of the dark beyond the world. Now fire burns in Ardmoor. You are the last of the Crown's sworn. Take the long road home: through the burned country and the horde's war camp, along the siege-broken castle wall, then in by the way the horde came out, down through the mine, the crypts, the caves, the sunken vault and the forge, and up through the castle to the throne.
Five callings and ten paths, ten places on the road to the throne, each with its own guardian, real tabletop rules, a new dungeon every day for everyone, a film score played live on the watch, and an iPhone companion that keeps your journal. No ads, no in-app purchases.
Help
What do I need to play?
An Apple Watch with watchOS 27 or later: Series 9 or later, Ultra 2 or later, or SE (3rd generation). The game runs entirely on the watch, so you don't need your iPhone nearby.
The iPhone app is optional. It keeps your journal of runs, the bestiary and your deeds.
How do I fight?
Turn the Digital Crown. It sets the angle of your blade, and sweeping it across the three lanes ahead is a swing. A still blade only guards.
It's a fight of timing. Strike when a creature rears back to wind up, before the blow lands. Meet a blow just as it lands and you parry it, and your next cut on that creature is a critical. Swinging costs wind, which shows in your blade: when it goes dark, rest it a moment.
A tap on the screen looses your calling's own power: the Wizard's spell, the Fighter's Battle Art once he has drafted one, the Barbarian's rage. A Rogue or Cleric who takes a spell on the road casts it the same way. Your first run teaches the rest as you go.
When does the daily dungeon change?
At midnight UTC, the same moment everywhere, so everyone on the leaderboard has played the same dungeon.
A run you start before the change is still that day's dungeon, but its score only counts on that day's leaderboard if it reaches Game Center before midnight UTC. After that, the daily board is ranking a new dungeon, and the score goes to the all-time Best Run board only.
My scores aren't showing in Game Center.
Check that you're signed in to Game Center in the Settings app on your iPhone. Your watch uses the same account. Scores made while you were offline are kept and sent the next time the game is open and online; your iPhone sends them too, as your runs reach it. A daily score that reaches Game Center after midnight UTC goes to the all-time Best Run board only, because by then the daily board is ranking the next day's dungeon.
Game Center is optional: the game plays fully without it.
My runs aren't appearing on my iPhone.
Open Crown Crawler on your iPhone once, with your watch nearby and unlocked. The watch sends each finished run to your own iPhone, and it can take a minute to arrive.
Where is my progress saved? What if I delete the app?
Your relics, blessings, the callings you've freed and everything else you've earned are saved on your Apple Watch and, if you're signed in to iCloud, backed up to your own iCloud, so reinstalling the game or setting up a new watch picks them up. A run in progress and the graphics setting stay with the watch they were played on. Your journal of past runs is saved on your iPhone. Nothing is kept on a server of ours.
Who writes the epitaphs?
On devices that support Apple Intelligence, Apple's Private Cloud Compute can write the line on your grave and the shopkeeper's greetings, from what happened in the run. Otherwise the game uses its own. See the privacy policy for exactly what is sent.
Can I change the crown's speed, the text size or the volume?
Yes. On the gate, scroll down to Options. You can set how quickly the blade follows the crown, the size of the text, and the music and sound-effect volumes separately, and you can reverse the crown so the blade swings the other way for the same turn. You can also turn the tips off.
Enhanced graphics adds reflections in water, rays of sun and moonlight, and creatures shaded by your torch. Turn it off and the game draws its faster version. The newest watches can also draw Max: all of Enhanced, with light glowing in the air round every torch and spell, eight lights on the stone, and more sparks from every power.
Contact
Something wrong, or an idea? Write to seanhenley@gmail.com. If it's a bug, please include your watch model, your watchOS version, and what you were doing when it happened.