Kill, always kill; kill to…defeat death? And why exactly? In Death Must Die, a hack-and-slash action game mixed with role-playing game elements and largely inspired by survival games, the reason why various heroes are used to attack the deity of death is largely kept secret. All we know is that we must triumph over hundreds, even thousands, of enemies. And start again and again until we succeed.
Developed and published by Realm Archive, the game, which was released in Early Access in mid-November after going through a very popular demonstration mode, will be familiar to players who have tried Halls of Torment or even Vampire Survivors. However, the principle is slightly modified here: if it is true that our character will end up acquiring a whole range of offensive, defensive or other skills, rather than becoming a machine for committing massacres, it will be more necessary to learn to avoid it You enemy attacks, which are always signaled in the form of a space that becomes increasingly red until the enemy blow is delivered.
To stay alive, it is of course possible to collect armor points, but the game mainly revolves around the two evasive maneuvers that each of the characters you can embody have – at the moment there are five, including big, slow and powerful warrior, an assassin, a witch, etc.
Speaking of evasive maneuvers, Death Must Die retains much of the same functionality as the demo version, in particular this inspiration is largely drawn from the excellent Hades, including the intervention of multiple deities, each with their advantages and their enhancement offerings, including us We must choose each Whenever our character levels up, the possibility of accumulating parades, which is very present in the demonstration, has disappeared.
So we have to be happy with what we have from the start. And so the tactical question takes on full meaning here: should we choose to get hit and lose a few life points, and then dodge a stronger attack? And what about the fights against the more powerful monsters, including those gargoyles that hurt terribly? Sometimes just being in the wrong place for a split second is enough for our adventure to end in pain (and inevitably death).
Fortunately, today the means of attack and defense at our disposal are much more numerous… and much more inventive. We just have to imagine exactly this ability, triggered by our evasive maneuvers, stealing life points from enemies and giving us back part of our health. Or those attacks that trigger thunderstorms or even fireballs, streams of ice…
We’re particularly excited about this ability, which gives us a random buff each time we level up for a limited time. This can lead to very ordinary results, or even something completely useless – like improving the speed of our spells while playing a big bloodthirsty barbarian – but also fantastic things, like that ring of fire that gradually fills the screen and it deals 666 damage to everything in it, enough to kill all but perhaps the strongest villains.
Again and again and again
Even if this new version of Death Must Die is much more complete, so with new characters, more equipment, more monsters… We will quickly realize that we are still in Early Access, for better or for worse.
The best thing about it is obviously this multiplication of possibilities. The worst thing is that single level, with the same rhythm, the same structure… Yes, it is possible to increase the difficulty, especially to increase the possibilities of finding rarer objects, but otherwise we will know that the gelatin giants appear around the fourth minute, the two gargoyles appear around the seventh minute, etc.
And what’s worse, the game doesn’t yet give us the full experience: the game inevitably ends after 20 minutes of action and a possible victory against Dracula. But Dracula isn’t Death, and so, as you can imagine, he’s missing about ten extra minutes.
Despite its incomplete appearance – after all, we have only just arrived in Early Access – Death Must Die is an excellent action game that combines moments of frenetic action and particularly successful graphics. And what more could you want for ten dollars?
Death must die
Developer and Publisher: RealmArchives
Platform: Windows (tested on Steam)
The game is not available in French