PC Review Code Provided by Devolver Digital
Take on the role of a flightless crow that fights its way through enemies with a sword. This is the role that Acid Nerve and Devolver Digital have given to players with their game Death’s Door. The rogue-lite title is definitely worth the time it takes to get through it and more because it is entertaining despite having such a silly setup.
Story
Being a reaper isn’t an easy job, but it is the one that you have. Despite there being a bit of a lull in your industry, you are lucky enough to have been given the task to collect a large soul meaning large rewards. Just as you finish the job and begin to collect the soul you were tasked to collect, a mysterious crow sneaks up behind you and steals it from you.
Knowing that you will remain mortal as long as the door that led you to your tasked soul is open you will remain mortal, a chase begins to find who took your soul. It doesn’t take long before you find that it is an old crow that was hoping to open the legendary Death Door in order to collect a their own tasked soul that was lost behind it. After it fails and your soul is lost, a new adventure begins to get inside of the legendary Death Door, but this task won’t be easy.
Gameplay
Starting off in the headquarters, you will not be able to do any combat actions but you can start getting used to the movement and rolling, aka dodging, controls. After having your first interaction with the worker crow’s of the lobby and your first doorway being opened to you, your journey begins.
Once in the door, the full game begins and combat is opened up to you. You have your regular three-swing combo, a rolling swing (executed when coming out of a dodge roll), a charged attack to work with, and your ranged attack using a power arrow. With this base combat system, you will fight your way through crowds of enemies, multiple bosses, and make your way through a labyrinth map by solving light puzzles and opening pathways as you make progress.
Your power arrow is the only attack that will naturally change throughout the game. After each major boss fight, a new ability will be given to you. These abilities can be changed at any time for their different uses in both opening pathways and combat. The most powerful of these abilities will be the bomb you can toss while the most useful of them will remain to be the power arrow, but none of them are useless. Other than the ranged attack options, you will come across new weapons to use in the game as well. Each weapon will have its own attack sequences, but the basic swing, rolling swing, and charged attack will remain the base of the combat system.
When it comes to the map, you will find that is cleverly set up to have you travel around long pathways, but as you reach certain points you will be able to create pathways to get to that area quicker. Whenever you die in the game, you will be sent back to the last door that you passed through but the map will remain however it was set last. So opening these new pathways could save you from having to make a long run around the map by letting you just climb up a ladder you dropped or going through a gate that was closed originally.
You can also come across shrines in this game. Individually, these shrines don’t do anything and will just give you a shard piece for health or magic. Once you collect all of the shards from the shrines you will be granted an increase in the maximum number for your health and magic levels.
Visuals and Audio
I really enjoyed the mixture of music used to portray the different moods for the various scenarios and settings that the adventure takes you through. Each area is given its own subtle and action-based soundtracks and they are always very fitting without being distracting nor overpowering. Plus, all the sound effects used were well blended into what both the players and enemies were doing.
Having a blended cartoon-style for the art was also a very clever and fitting aspect of this game. I mean, we do play as a literal crow that can’t fly and is a reaper of death that fights with a sword. If a cartoon-style graphic wasn’t the right fit for this, I really don’t know what would have been.
Replayability
While there is actual bonus content to explore and complete after you beat the game, I would say that there is room for replayability as well. The story and tasks may be the same, but you can also switch up the stats that you choose to upgrade and the weapons that you use. Plus, there is also the drive to be a completionist and find all of the hidden items throughout the game.
What Could Be Better
It would have been very useful to have a map or minimap to use when trying to find my way through the various locations. I found myself looping or getting lost multiple times and something as simple as a minimap would have helped avoid this from happening. Even if it was one of those maps that don’t fill in until you venture through the area.
Conclusion
Death’s Door is ‘reaping’ entertaining! The rogue-lite gameplay mechanics were set up very smoothly and I ran into virtually no problems while playing through the game. Not to mention that it felt challenging, but not overly frustrating. It just simply had a solid mix of all the core elements that a rogue-lite would need to be well developed and fun to play. Definitely a title that I strongly recommend to the adventurous players looking for a new action-filled game to play!
