I haven’t played many roguelikes yet, simply because the principle doesn’t really appeal to me. I still gave today’s title “Have a Nice Death” a chance – it seemed like an interesting game full of gallows humor and interesting fights. Since I discontinued pretty early on, the conclusion is probably clear – but I would still like to say a few words about it.

First of all I would like to say one thing: I personally don’t like the game, but I see a lot of potential in it, provided that it is not intended exactly as it is now. I find the setting very interesting and found many points to be very positive – but there were also enough points that were so negative that it wasn’t worth continuing to play for me. But what is the game actually about?

The story is about death – that is, death itself, personified. He has overworked himself in the long time that he has been concerned about the end of people, but not only that: he has also lost control. Instead of a mystical afterlife in which demons and fallen angels handle dead people, Death is now a large company that is completely submerged in bureaucracy. Various of our subordinates are now hiding in this jungle and taking advantage of the entrenched structures to either laze around or pursue their own goals – and no one takes us seriously anymore.

So now it’s time to clean up. We grab our scythe and navigate through different departments to collect energy and various skills (there are three slots available to us, one of which is always occupied by the main weapon – the other two can be used for magical abilities). At the end of each department, which consists of about 5 floors through which we have to run, jump and fight our way, the head of the department is waiting – a boss level. We have to defeat them, or we’ll have to start all over again.

As soon as we have defeated a main opponent, the elevator takes us directly to his floor in the next run – so in the final run you only have to defeat all intermediate bosses and the final floor; at least that’s the theory.

As I already said, I really liked the game in many aspects. Running, jumping and fighting through the levels is a lot of fun and at one point or another reminded me of “Hollow Knight” – I had just as much fun there. The game is also impressive from a technical point of view: the cartoonish graphics, the sound design and the story, which deals with life in a large, over-bureaucratized company and how it deals with difficult topics such as burnout and other psychological problems in a humorous way (without ever becoming disrespectful) really excited me. The controls were precise and overall, everything ran very smoothly.

However, there was one problem, and that was the rogue-like mechanics. I have to mention at this point that I personally have never been a big fan of it, I just found it to be particularly poorly implemented here. And we’ll get into that now.

The first problem was the elevator, which takes you straight to the next boss: a good idea in theory, of course, but used here quite carelessly. Because of the game design, in order to defeat the boss and progress in the following level, it is essential that you collect additional magic and points in order to buy items – this is only possible in the levels, since such things are always reset after death. So the elevator was effectively useless. At some point I no longer found playing the levels over and over again (and running the risk of getting so badly injured that you can no longer make it to the boss) all that interesting.

The second major problem were the weapons. At the beginning of each level you could replace the normal scythe with a different one at random. You could also find different spells in the levels and randomly exchange those things before approaching the boss. However, there was a problem: the quality of the weapons and magical attacks varied so widely that there were only a few good combinations that would really help you make progress. With most of the combinations, the fights degenerated into endless back-and-forths, which I personally didn’t enjoy. So I often preferred to die several times in a row until the combination I preferred appeared again – that was more annoying than interesting.

In this particular setting, the large selection of magical attacks and scythes became more of a curse than a blessing, as it took more attempts until a good combination was available. At the beginning of each run you could influence the whole thing a bit by buying a certain item in a store, but this was only possible once – after that it was no longer available in the store for all succeeding runs.

Overall, unfortunately, this left me more frustrated than excited. I’m not sure if these big differences in the qualities of the weapons are intentional or a lack of balance – as it currently stands, at least for me it’s not fun. I’ll keep an eye on the game, maybe there will be further adjustments – the story and the other points I mentioned would definitely be worth trying again at a later date.

What did you think of the game? Did you like watching it, have you already played it yourself or are you planning to do? Join the discussion on Discord!