Giving us an interesting tale of when the CEO of Death Inc. realized that his company was starting to get out of control and all the workers, including Death himself, are overworked is Magic Design Studios and Gearbox Publishing. In order to correct this company error, Death will have to fight his way to the Sorrows he created to originally help him with the tasking job of collecting souls. But now, it’s hard to Have A Nice Death when you’re constantly swamped in paperwork!

Before diving into the game details themselves, feel free to check out our interview with the developers to get to know more about the game itself.

Gameplay

Just as with any roguelike, this game will be an all-or-nothing when it comes to progress. As you make your way through the level, you will come across plenty of enemies. It is important to collect souls as you progress for the times that you can hit the shop to regain some health or upgrade your gear, so make sure you smack the orbs when you find them and try not to lose too much health in the mandatory fight sections that reward you with souls for surviving.

Starting out the game, you do go through a quick tutorial of the controls. In this game, you have jumping, dashing, standard movement, the ability to go up a soul-pipe-like aspect, and your attack buttons. What they don’t teach you in the tutorial is that if you hold your attack button, you will do a charged attack. You start out with just your scythe for attacks, but you can get a secondary attack along the way and even a third bonus attack.

To get these other attacks, you will be collecting a weapon to take the slot. Your scythe will remain in your left mouse button (or main attack), but you can swap out your right mouse button (or secondary attack) with a variety of weapons that can be found, all of which can be unlocked with the ingots you earn at the end of each run. The third attack option is a special ability that you can be collected.

Along with finding weapons and souls from enemies, you can find various upgrades. This could be a health increase, mana increase, or a health item that can be used to instantly regain health. Keep in mind, your health bar will have a white, gray, and empty status. White is the actual health you have, gray is the amount of health you can recover, and empty is lost health until you find a permanent increase. The health item comes in blue for standard healing and gold for super healing, which will refill some of the empty health bar as well.

You will also come across curses along the way, but these are more often a good thing for the player. When you come across the NPC that offers this, you will get to pick from three options that can benefit you, but there is also a chance of picking an option that benefits your enemies. Curses can be lifted if you are lucky enough to find the item that can lift them.

After you complete an area, you will go in an elevator that will take you to different floors. You will typically get to choose which floor to go to, but if you see the option to go to a Thanager’s office, you should take that - especially if it is before a shop floor. These are mini-boss floors and by defeating them you will get an extra bonus at the end of the run. If you get this floor before the shop, you also have a chance to just purchase your health back before the boss at the end of the level. Other than shops, you can find another floor that will let you upgrade your weapon with souls and prisms. Prisms are rare and, just like souls, are used to aid your progress, so make sure you use them wisely.

The key with this game, as with many roguelikes, is to learn your enemy’s moves and fight accordingly. If you do well enough to defeat a boss and move on to the next level, you will be treated to a quick break room that acts like a mini-shop. Make sure you grab what you can because it is about to get hectic again on the other side of those elevator doors!

Expectations

This game is already on a solid foreground, but I look forward to seeing a larger variety of Thanager mini-bosses, departments for later in the game, and the kinds of enemies we will have to fight through. I thought it was interesting that killing enemies doesn't seem to have a reward, such as souls, but it is still worth fighting through them as it gives a chance for drops. Maybe this will be something more consistent in the later game as the luck factor is a bit strong with the game’s current build.

When it comes to the blessing and curses factor, they don’t seem to be very effective. The best upgrade I saw was a damage booster. Other than that, it is options like gaining 5 health or mana points, which is practically nothing in a punishing roguelike game. I hope to see much more beneficial options, even if they come with more curses and we see the NPC that offers them less often.

Verdict

Have A Nice Death has killed off a solid early access execution! This game is fun right off the office chair and takes you into short sections of fairly difficult sections to get through. It definitely has a skill-based factor to the setup, but it also has strategy placed as well. Completing a run without killing the smaller enemies will leave you broke for the shops, but if you’re skilled enough you won’t need to purchase anything. However, killing everything along the way risks a bit of health to gain a bunch of souls for purchases and upgrades. It already has a fine balance and is fun to play through, so I can only imagine what the final version of the game will behold!

Have a Nice Death is now available on PC via Steam’s early access.