Developer: Acid Nerve
Rrp: £16.79 (Gog.com, Humblebundle, Steam and Epic)
If you wanted to boil Death’s Door down to its most basic elements you could call it a hack and slash game with some light RPG elements. However, while that description is true in the most strict of senses there’s more to this game than that. Acid Nerve have taken some of the DNA of the Soulsborne genre and implemented it in this game. Usually when someone says there’s a Soulsborne element to a game it means they’ve added the ‘lose your loot if you die before collecting it’ or ‘made the combat hard’ aspects of the genre, but that’s not so in this game… well, the combat is quite hard but neither here nor there. No, the aspect of the Soulsborne genre that people seem to forget about is recursivity, meaning that the levels and sometimes even themes of the game loop back on itself. That ability to go back to the start while also progressing the game is a core part of what makes the Soulsborne genre, and this game has it in spades.
Most of this game is spent doing one of two things; exploring or fighting. Exploration is almost always rewarded in this game though you will occasionally find places where you don’t have a skill needed to continue. The combat is very simple, there are no combo moves to perform etc but you will have to watch for your opponents ‘tells’ otherwise you might find yourself on the receiving end of a club.
I had a blast playing this game, in fact I enjoyed myself so much I completed it to 100% (though not all achievements because some of those are way too much work for me). If you want to play a wonderful game with a great sense of humour and that challenges you I highly recommend Death’s Door.
