Death's Door Review

Synopsis: Reaping souls of the dead and punching a clock might get monotonous, but it’s honest work for a Crow. The job gets lively when your assigned soul is stolen and you must track down a desperate thief to a realm untouched by death—where creatures grow far past their expiry.

Publisher: Devolver Digital
Reviewed on: PC (Ryzen 5 2600, RTX 2070 Super, 32GB DDR4)
Also available for: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Developer: Acid Nerve
Game Design: David Fenn, Mark Foster
Level Design, Production, Music & Sound: David Fenn
Programming, Story & Writing, Animation: Mark Foster
Art Design, Concept Art, UI Art & Logo Design: Frits Olsen

Death’s Door can have you laughing out loud, scratching your head in confusion, and wanting to throw your controller on the ground. I’ve never played a game that felt both genuinely funny and featured teeth-grinding boss battles. But that’s Death’s Door, the second game from Acid Nerve, whose previous game, Titan Souls, featured nothing but brutally hard boss battles. They’re here too, but in more than one way, Titan Souls feels like a small stepping stone to get to Death’s Door.

You play as a cute crow who’s more or less a stand-in for the Grim Reaper. Your job is to collect souls and, as the opening sets up, it’s a very monotonous job in which crows turn up to work in a monochrome marble-floored office, hating every second of their shift. However, things quickly get interesting as a Grey Crow steals the soul you were assigned to reap, which sends you on a whirlwind journey to retrieve it. Without that soul, you’ll begin to age, and death will come for you.

To retrieve the soul you lost, you’ll need to slay three others whose souls will help you recover what you seek. A wicked Witch, a Frog King, and a beast high in the mountains are your targets, and each hides away in their labyrinth for you to work through before you’re able to come face to face.

Combat in Death’s Door is simple but a joy to play because of how great everything looks and feels. Swinging your sword and rolling around enemies as they go to attack you is fast, and the crow’s animations are super-smooth. You’ll notice just how good all of this is when you fight any of the bosses, all of which are nimble and have plenty of area-of-effect attacks for you to appreciate the precise and fast nature of Death’s Door. It’s not that the mechanics are deep—they’re really not—but similar to Acid Nerve’s last game, where you only fired one arrow, the team has mastered what they’ve included.

Bird: Tomb Raider — image captured by the author

The boss fights can become quite tricky. I found the first couple relatively easy, but the last couple had me wanting to throw my controller in frustration. There’s nothing cheap here, though, and each boss features attack patterns you will master through perseverance—but the difficulty curve may turn some players off. If you’ve played Axiom Verge or either of the Ori games, you’ll be fine here.

There are elements that make it feel like a Metroidvania, but it also equally feels like the 2D Zelda games that obviously inspired it. You make your way to each of the three regions, and once you arrive inside each villain’s dungeon or castle, you’ll solve puzzles and ultimately collect a new power that helps you reach the boss. In the first location—the Witch’s castle—you’ll earn the fire spell, which allows you to activate mechanisms you couldn’t before. Each area feels distinct, with its own enemy types.

A growing bird — image captured by the author

As much as I’d like to say I didn’t have a favourite area, one thing the first area—the Witch’s castle—has going for it is the character Pothead, one of the funniest characters I’ve interacted with in any game for some time. Death’s Door has a dry sense of humour from start to finish, but Pothead and his explanations as to why he has a pot on his head will be some of my favourite gaming memories of the year.

There’s more than enough reason to explore each nook and cranny: you’ll find crystal shards that can be collected to increase both your health and magic bars. You’ll also see collectibles throughout each location, which expand on the lore and world around you.

Play

Death’s Door has several gaming inspirations, but there’s also a taste of Studio Ghibli in the character and world design. The Urn Witch especially feels like a character pulled straight out of something like Howl’s Moving Castle or Spirited Away. This is a beautiful video game that invites you deep inside its world—from the splatters of blood enemies splash onto castle walls to the reflections of lamps in the water in the Frog King’s domain, and the way the light from wizard spells glides across hallways. All of these elements come together with a fantastic original score.

Every element of Death’s Door feels like the product of a much larger team than the couple of developers working at Acid Nerve. The fact it can play as well as it does, be as funny and exciting as it is, feature such well-designed boss battles, and look as good as it does from an art and animation standpoint is just insane to me. Death’s Door is a crowning achievement for Acid Nerve, a must-play for the year and an instant game-of-the-year contender.