Death must die
Take the movement patterns and simple look of Vampire Survivors and combine with the blessings of various gods in Hades, throw in some Diablo-esque armor, amulets and weapons as well and you have Death Must Die. A bit like Ernst Kirchsteiger said – “In the simple resides the beautiful”, but replace beautiful with funny and it will be a more accurate description of this.
Easily gets a little chaotic at the end of the rounds when you get several abilities and the number of enemies is increased.
The setup is the same as Vampire Survivor, choose your hero and then you start in the middle of a deserted field and within a few seconds the skeletons start swarming you. Unlike Vampire Survivor, you can attack the enemy yourself, choose when and where to strike. There is a function that automatically hits the nearest enemy, but you lose a little speed when you hit, you get better control if you control it yourself. To begin with, you only have access to a normal attack and the possibility to dash, it is limited and goes on cooldown, so you have to choose your opportunities.
When certain enemies are defeated, they drop small cubes that you collect, collect enough and you level up! Then you get to meet your first god who gives you three choices, additional benefits to keep fighting. Right now there are ten different gods who want to help you on your way to defeat Death. There are such Gods as you can imagine, Gods of cold, fire, earth and lightning. But also Gods of fate, conquest and time.
Each God gives you different benefits. It can be an upgrade to your normal attack, so in addition to percentage increasing your damage, it adds various elemental effects. It’s not just your normal attack that improves and gains new properties, your dash can gain similar effects. The God of Electricity turns you into a ball of electricity during the dash, the Goddess of Winter releases a ring of ice that freezes the nearest enemies.
There’s also the option of gaining additional spells that are used automatically, or the power to summon minions to help you fight, but you can also gain other powers that can help you along the way. There is the possibility of creating powerful synergies, but since everything is randomized you have to be a bit lucky. There is a limit to how many gods you can have in a round.
The map is generated while you play and it is infinite. The enemies spawn at their fixed times, the first map has a round of 20 minutes until the final boss appears. On the map, there are also extra perks that spawn what feels randomized. There are chests with equipment, sources that give you health, and shrines that give you either temporary or permanent bonuses. Some permanent bonuses are small but there are some that give bigger bonuses that can change the round completely. So you usually run around the map and find as many bonuses as you can while defeating the enemy and leveling up properly.
It’s not completely balanced either – in a positive way. I’ve had some rounds when all the bonuses work great together and you get a really strong character that plays into the goal. Other times it doesn’t quite work out and at the first boss you get a big hit.
There are six characters to choose from, four melee and two with ranged attacks – an archer and a mage. They are varied and fun to switch between the heroes, with the latest update they also got a skill tree to work with, there is the option to specialize even more, but haven’t had time to test it yet, haven’t gotten that far with the new update . Then there was also a new map with new enemies.
One of the four melee heroes. The controls are not on screen all the time, unfortunately linked to the same as Steam’s screenshot button.
Appearance-wise, it looks good, the pixelated graphics fit well. It also scrolls smoothly even when the screen is full of enemies. I also like the sound, it’s the death sound of an enemy that reminds me of the sound when you open a beer can. Good overall impression of sound and graphics. The designs on the gods and goddesses are more on the exaggerated side, works well overall although I’m not a fan of what I think are the anime-inspired girl faces on some of the goddesses.
There must be some kind of story, but nothing stuck. Between your rounds your characters can talk to each other but from what little I’ve seen it’s embarrassingly bad. The gods and goddesses have some dialogue that works better. But it’s mostly side noise I don’t notice anymore.
When I started playing it was a bit unclear which powers were improved but with a few patches it has gotten better. Inventory management is also a bit slow, during the rounds you collect armor and weapons that only some of the heroes can carry but they have a common inventory.
Control-wise, I’ve only played with an Xbox controller and it works great. Can’t imagine playing with anything else. Would think it works well for Steamdeck as well, especially the shorter rounds way. Gameplay wise it’s great fun and can highly recommend it.
