I am looking for a new game, and Ian suggested Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios) on Game Pass. It’s a 2D roguelike-lite (my term for any game that is like Binding of Isaac) in which–wait. First of all, I thought I had played the demo for the game, but it was another game in which there is a cute Death character. And it also reminded me of Death’s Door (Acid Nerve) a bit, but probably just because of the word death in the title.
I just looked up the other game for which I played the demo. It was Death and Taxes (Placeholder Gameworks) in which you decide who lives an ddies. It’s not grim, though. It’s kind of perky and cute. At least, I think that’s what it was supposed to be. It didn’t hit me that way, and I quit after half an hour or so.
Anyway, I really liked the graphics in Have a Nice Death. It’s cute, but not cloying. It feels moody without being oppressive, either. I’ve included a trailer below (still deciding which one to include). Much of the background is in shades of black and white. There are flashes of color in the different attacks and such. Which, actually, is one of the issues I want to discuss later on. In general, the look of the game is one I like and gel with.
I will say that after playing for several hours a few days ago, my game was lost. Whether it was a glitch of the cloud save or me pressing Y to delete the save, I cannot say for sure. If it’s the latter, I would say to make it much clearer that you’re actually deleting a save because I was unpleasantly surprised when I booted up the game the next day and it turned out I had lost all the progress I had made the day before.
Side note, kind of: I have been thinking to buy this on Steam to support the dev. When I found out that I lost my game file, I thought that would have been a good time to buy it on Steam. Instead, I started up again on Game Pass and got back to where I had been in about an hour instead of two or three, and I beat the first big boss for the first time to boot.
I have to say, I like the overarching gestalt better than the combat. I’ll get to the latter in a minute. There is something weird going on in Death Co., and it’s up to Death, the CEO, to figure it out. It’s funny because Death is portrayed as a beleagured middle manager more than the owner/CEO of the corporation, but it’s funnier in that way. Most of the workers treat him as an equal than a boss, or like…I don’t know, a distant uncle? They complain to him about the irritations of worknig in a faceless corporation. So, HR? But not the head of HR.
I love the NPCs. They each have an exaggerated personality of a notable office type. And I’m sure most of their names are puns or jokes of some sort. Such as the highly-caffeinated data guy is called Joe. The lovable, naive intern is Pump Quinn. Funnily, the harridan office manager is called Harriet. Hm. I called her a harridan, maybe subconsciously drawing on the fact that her name is Harriet.
The bosses and mini-bosses are managers of departments. Also called Sorrows, which was something I didn’t quoite get in the game. I had to look it up because Sorrows kept being mentioned, and I wasn’t sure what they were exactly. At first, I thought it just meant all the enemies. Nope. Then I thought maybe just the bosses. Nope.
This is the tension is many games like this. How to breadcrumb things in such a way that people want to keep playing, but aren’t frustrated by the lack of information. I did quick skim a review of this game just now and they mentioned how boring a plot the game had. And, I would say, that’s notrue at this point because there are many seeds planted. But that review (The Escapist) seemed to have finished the game, so it’s possible that the seeds planted never flowered.
Here’s the thing. From the beginning, the combat has been the thing most lacking in this game. The enemies are very basic in each zone. (A zone has six different floors, but two of them don’t have enemies.) More weirdly, each floor is very sparse. The layout is much like Dead Cells (Motion Twin), which means you can traverse the floor in more than one way. But, whereas in Dead Cells, you’d encounter interesting enemies each way, in this game, you will run into enemies in one of those ways, but not in others. I thought maybe it meant that later there would be things added to the areas, but I think this is supposed to be a complete game.
I also have to mention that the controls were all fucked up. I had to switch roll to B (come the fuck on! Roll is B!) and heal to X (I mean…this is the second game I’ve played recently with heal on LB. Nope), which was bad enough. But I also had to switch the attack options to RB for the main attack (hold it down for a strong attack), RT for the secondary attack, and Y for the tertiary attack. LB became interaction (I think my LB is not working great. Ugh.), and–I tihnk that’s it. Once I changed the controls to that, it was easier to navigate.
Back to the narrative–I enjoy interacting with the NPCs, but that’s because I think there’s going to be a bigger story. If that’s not the case, then I will be disappointed. Flavor text is fine, but the way it’s set up, it’s pointing to there being more than what is actually being said.
I will say, Hades (Supergiant Games) has spoiled me when it comes to roguelikes and narrative. There are something like 300,000 lines of dialogue in that game and I was still getting new interactions even when I platted the game. Beating the game for the first time took a long time, and I thought I would never do it. Once I did, I felt compelled to keep going in part because of the story. I was so invested, and I wanted to know what happened to the characters.
I don’t have the same investment with the characters in Have a Nice Death, but I do want to see where the narrative goes. I also have no idea how far I am because of the interesting way the game does the levels. Death, Inc. is in an office building You go down in the elevator after beating the first floor, and you get to choose which floor you want until the fifth floor which is the shop and the sixth floor wihch is the big boss (of the first area–which is all the first six floors combined). Funnily, I have opened an elevator on the first floor that will take me straight to the first boss (which you can do after doing the first floor or before), but I have never tried it.
The combat is very erratic in terms of difficulty. The enemies in the first area aren’t that hard in general, but the amount of damage they can do is so varying. And I don’t know why certain attacks hurt so hard.
I’m done for today. I’ll write more about it later. Maybe.