Have a Nice Death review: a roguelike with diminishing returns

part of the magic devil wears prada How deftly the film traverses the fine line between denouncing a soul-sucking work culture and creating empathy for the people within it. Intern Andy Sachs resists Miranda Priestley’s authoritarian clutches over fashion magazines, but finds himself becoming more and more like Priestley. It shows how influential you are.

new roguelike have a nice death It delves into the same ideas with its critiques of work culture and burnout — but rather than portraying cruel bosses with the right amount of criticism, the game veers into unwarranted sympathy for overworked CEOs.

Developer Magic Design Studios’ protagonist is Death Inc. founder Death. Death deals with burnout from processing too many souls into the afterlife realm. He created employees to help collect the dead, but these employees went rogue and began wreaking havoc in his life-ending industry.

At this pivotal moment, you are in charge of death. Armed with his trusty sickle, cloak, and a book with the names of the dead, Death must navigate his way through labyrinthine workplaces, dealing with wayward employees, fighting, outwitting, and whipping them back into shape. must be

Death Headquarters is beautiful. The procedurally generated 2D dungeons look like they were pulled straight out of a Disney movie (the game often feels like a playable Pixar short). The animation unfolds in a breezy, moody noir accentuated by minimal splashes of color.

Combat mechanics glow neon as curses, slashes, and projectiles fly across a dull gray landscape. Mechanically, the game is a joy to play.Combat is smooth and responsive, unlike any other dead cells (His lead designer was “closely working” with Magic Design), feels like a hack and slash. The death cloak can transform into additional weapons such as a giant hammer and a cloud of poison. Weapons are easy to unlock, and available storage slots in your inventory make it easy to switch between fighting styles mid-run. The act of building momentum in an early run is satisfying, challenging, and exciting.

There are currently seven worlds (another is planned for the full 1.0 release of the game on March 22nd), each with its own boss called Sorrow. Above all, Major Warren Pliskan, an overzealous war general and head of the Modern Warfare Division. Each biome has only 3 or 4 main enemy types on average in each biome, so the levels can get tedious, but the attractively designed main boss battles are worth every run. remains challenging.

Image: Magic Design Studios/Gearbox Publishing

As with any roguelike game, dying will send you back to the beginning (although we don’t know how death itself dies), and you’ll encounter various griefs. stand-in for a global force to end life, that too Productive at “handling” (read: killing) people. As a result, Death has to visit each of his employees and they argue with him about the quality of their work before you try to beat them down.

Roguelikes are a fruitful opportunity to ask questions about burnout, work culture, and even labor organization. go down, assassination hitman worldfreelancer mode, and even Hades Build each workplace into an endless loop filled with evil.

but here have a nice death That’s also where it suffers, unlike these other workplace roguelikes. Instead of building an empathy for labor by playing as an intern in a failed startup dungeon, or as the son of an underworld god or a house cleaner, you play as a manager.

Focusing on Death, without interrogation about his role at Death Inc. have a nice death, intentionally or not, frames the CEO as a sympathetic figure. And in a way, he’s grumpy but charming. However, in his role as supervisor and exploiter of workers, it’s hard to hope that he’ll do well, as he’s yelling at his employees.

There is a version of this game in which Death recognizes his and his company’s exploitative practices, and thus the more sarcastic jokes littered across the land, as he comes to deal with the pain and stress he’s caused. It will be difficult. But in the current state, have a nice death I can’t get that balance.

Image: Magic Design Studios/Gearbox Publishing

The creepy humor is charming at first, but it quickly sours when you meet mini-bosses like W. Hung (a noose) and Sorrow Maxxx (an addiction personification with a syringe sticking out of his back). I shook my head in disappointing shock when I encountered Christina Thoreau, an orientalist geisha who stands in for natural disasters. I ended up actively avoiding the branching paths that lead to these bosses.

It’s a careful blend of mechanical improvements and narrative progression that brings me back to roguelikes that fail over and over again. The development of the hero’s (and player’s) skills in his set and the gradual slant of the character’s story in his arc are important.

of have a nice deathbut further discoveries only lowered my rating for the game. .

there will probably be conclusion of the story This kicks off with the full release of the game when it becomes clear who is causing the ruckus and chaos at Death Inc. and Death finally gets PTO. And it’s even more pessimistic whether a neat bow can be tied to such a messy storyline.

The game itself is beautiful and the battles are nice, but the more you dig into have a nice deathless value I find.

have a nice death It will be released on March 22nd on Nintendo Switch and Windows PC. This game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Gearbox Publishing. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.