Overall 7 Graphics 8 Sound 9 Addictive 6 Story 5 Depth 6 Difficulty 7
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Adorable Little Reapers supercool22
OverviewDeath's Door is an isometric action-adventure indie game released July 20, 2021 on Steam. The game was developed by Acid Nerve and published by Devolver Digital.
GraphicsDeath's Door was created on the Unity game engine, an engine widely used by indie game studios. The game offers a pretty limited amount of graphical options, limited to just Ambient Occlusion, Anti Aliasing, Depth of Field, and Reflections. No Texture or Shadow options which is present in most games. Even with the limited options the game has light hardware requirements. The minimum needing a Intel Core i5-8250U; AMD Phenom II X4 965, GeForce MX 150; Radeon R7 260X, and 8GB RAM.
The graphics looks visually appealing. Death's Door isn't trying to be the best looking game. They went after a unique art style with the game. A bleak but beautiful world with great low poly graphics and beautiful shaders. The world is filled with unique characters and inhabitants, as well as each stage having fantastic environments and unique designs.
SoundDeath's Door has fantastic soundtracks that play throughout the game. Every location you explore in the has its own background music that plays. For the most part a lot of the music is pretty calming, great for exploring a rather bleak world. Of course the music amps up during boss fights and becomes eerie in dungeon like areas, and during boss fights. The soundtrack is quite memorable, and I enjoy listening to it even when I'm not playing the game.
The composer of the soundtrack for the game is David Fenn.
AddictivenessIts hard to really say how addictive this game is. The game seem a bit one and done, not much in terms of replay-ability. I personally haven't decided to replay this game, not really much I do different from my last playthrough, unless I wanted to speedrun or 100% the game. I managed to beat the game with an 12 hour playtime which included me unlocking most of the combat upgrades and exploring whenever I can.
You don't really have much of a choice of how you want to follow the story. You can explore quite a bit outside the set path/main quest line. The dungeons you explore can hold hidden secrets that can help you considerably in the game. Other than that, Death's Door is still an enjoyable game.
StoryWARNING - Spoliers!Death's Door starts off with taking a role a crow with a sword who works as a reaper for the Reaping Commission Headquarters. These “reapers” collect the souls for the Reaping Commission. While on the job collecting a soul assigned to you, you end up getting attacked from behind by an mysterious old crow who ends up stealing your assigned soul. You go after the old crow and venture into a world untouched by death. He meets the old crow again where he is told of an conspiracy regarding the disappearance of other crows.
DepthMy first playthrough of the game took me almost 12 hours to beat. While I don't try to 100% or speedrun the game (or both), I like to stray off the unbeaten path to search for secrets, collectables and power ups. The secret areas and puzzles in the game will consist of large quantity of souls, shrines, weapons, shiny things (collectable items)
Souls are used to upgrade your 4 abilities which are Strength, Dexterity, Haste, and Magic. It is recommended to try to get as many souls as possible and try to max out your abilities. It will help immensely in the late game.
Shrines are hidden structures found throughout the world, finding each shrines will yield a crystal, a pink crystal to upgrade your magic usage, or a green crystal to upgrade your health. You don't have to max out health if you're good at evading attacks, get all magic shards is a must.
Their are various different weapons in the game, namely 5 weapons, which can all be useful as the stats are spread out well enough to accommodate different styles of fighting needed for enemies and bosses. You can hit enemies with high damage with slow attack speeds or vice versa, and every thing in between. The player starts with a Reaper Sword which is the standard sword with all around balanced stats.
Lastly you can collect shiny things which are collectable items scattered throughout the world. They mostly don't have in-game use but the item description contains lore information. You do need to collect them for an achievement.
Even though it didn't take me much time to actually finish the game, that doesn't mean I didn't have fun playing the game. It offers a good amount of content to keep you hooked into it. You have to go out of your way to explore every nook and cranny of the world to find hidden loot, and secrets that can really benefit you, which makes them worth while to look for.
DifficultyDeath's Door is a challenging game on the surface. I died quite a bit not only from bosses but a random enemies in the game. This game requires you to learn enemy attack patterns and to be quick with evading attacks. You definitely have to switch between your weapons quite a bit.
As for the bosses, they're challenging at first but once you learn their attack patterns and phases its starts to become easier to defeat them after dying a few times. They're all unique with how they attack, so it can take time to remember every attack pattern.
Ultimately, this game is hard if its you're first time playing and/or new to the genre. I personally was having hard time getting through this game when I started the game. Once I started learning the mechanics and such, the game started to get much easier, which is normal for any game. Its just that a game that built around being difficult should have more variety for bosses and normal enemies to make them at least challenge regardless of how much you played the game. Sadly there is no difficulty setting for those who really want to challenge.
OverallDeath's Door is a nice game to pick up and play if need a break from big name AAA games. The game looks greats. The gameplay is pretty good, and the story is decent. The only wish the game had more content outside of just searching for secrets and solving lackluster puzzles. I would highly recommend getting it while its on sale, though its regular price isn't too bad either.
Graphics 8 Sound 9 Addictive 6 Story 5 Depth 6 Difficulty 7
Review Rating: 3/5
Submitted: 12-22-23
Review Replies: 0
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