Death’s Door
Developer: Acid Nerve
If you don’t get excited about a crow with a lightsaber, I don’t know how to talk to you.
Death has never been quite this organised. You are a reaper, responsible for finding souls and bringing them to Reaper Commission Headquarters. It’s not about a skeleton going around in a torn cloak with a scythe, now there’s an entire bureaucracy behind the afterlife. And, oh boy, the office politics are deep.
Death’s Door is an isometric action-adventure that has you travelling to various worlds to find 3 big souls to clear your reputation after the one you were sent for gets swiped. Each big soul belongs to the area's boss, who you have to set about bashing around the face. There’s a lot of Zelda-like, such as picking up new weapons and abilities to get into places in other areas. There are optional secrets dotted around with the requisite backtracking and puzzles to solve to find them.
Souls-like gets thrown around far too easily these days. You do collect souls as currency, and you do spend those souls for upgrades, but that’s not unique. You could easily swap out souls for rupees and it’d have just as much meaning. You don’t lose your stash or have to re-gather them from where you died, and enemies don’t respawn when you touch healing points - like a lot of similar games, enemies respawn when you re-enter the level or die.
Dying isn’t anything more than a minor inconvenience - you get shunted to the last door you came through and have to fight your way back. Health is the biggest obstacle because you have so little of it, and there are no half-hearts. There are also no health potions - to heal, you have to plant seeds in pots. The resultant plant is good for one full heal, but then there’s a delay before you can use it again.
The Reaper Commission Headquarters acts as a hub world, which steadily opens up as the game progresses. As nice as the environment design is, this place definitely captures the drudgery of a monotonous office job - everything is ordered, other workers make snide remarks, and it’s almost entirely black and white. You even get a bus to work, which was the cherry on top.
There are some great, subtle design choices, too. From the depth of field used to blur out lower areas to the way your character’s head twitches back and forth like a real bird, everything pulls together to enhance the charm. Puzzles are cleverly thought out using different levels within an area, and some use reflections to hide objects.
Possibly the most surprising aspect is that this is a sequel, in that it shares the same universe as another game from the developers - Titan Souls. In terms of playstyle, both share some similarities in simplicity, but Death’s Door is more refined, more experienced. You can see where the ideas came from, and what they grew into. What’s more, the dev team are only a two-man outfit from Manchester.
You are but a small crow, desperately trying to do his job; a low-level worker who somehow gets embroiled in the politics of upper management. It’s a bitter irony trying to sell this game on that premise when so many of us are trying to avoid just that. Still, it’s fun smashing up all their stuff with your lightsaber.
