Hands on with Death's Door - Preview
Death’s Door is the next game from Acid Nerve, the folks behind Titan Souls and thanks to Devolver Digital, we got hands on with it, ahead of the release this July. Having played it, was the game a fun experience, or should the developers eat some crow?
The games story starts out quite simple, you are a reaper, with your daily job to venture out into the world to collect souls of the departed, oh and you are a crow. Your latest task has you tracking down a giant soul, which will give you a nice leg up in the crow-perate world you work in, but there is a catch, while you are immortal in the office, once you venture out through into the realm of the living, you are mortal and that means you will age and you can die.
Venturing out with your newly assigned soul to reap, has you start to play the game proper, and this is where things got good for me, there is a mix of combat and light puzzle exploration, but the game didn’t hold my hand at all. This isn’t to say that it was punishing, in a twisted way, it just kept all the tutorials and such out of the way of my exploring. Exploring is something you will do without meaning to, simply because the game doesn’t at least in the time I had with it, explain directions all that well, you are just left to wander the mortal realm at your own pace.
What was interesting is that once I started to get an understanding of how the world was built, things started to connect more for me, as in spending time trudging around, would often reward me with a lever or button to press, which would in turn create a shortcut, should I die and I did die, a lot. A lot of that can be attributed to the enemies and the combat mechanics, which are simple, but does require you to learn the timings of your attacks and dodges, some enemies will be easy to avoid, others not so much. It is these smaller fights that helped me prepare for the big boss fight, which takes place against, what is essentially a walking cathedral, just with laser eyes and rockets, it was after this fight though, that I finally got to the opening title.
The story from then on is not something I can go into, at least in detail, but in general terms, your last assignment, which did not end with a successful completion of the objective, has left you stuck within this realm and the only way out is through Death’s Door. But the door won’t just open because you want it to, no, instead you need to power it up with souls and while you can find lost souls littered around the place, they are small, not really enough for anything, no you need powerful souls and they require you to take down some big boss level folks.
When the game debuted, I was on board, now that I have sunk sometime into it, I am even more committed to it, the combat is tight and won’t let you just mash away to the end. Exploration is a big thing and even the most random looking path can provide a reward for your efforts and while the bosses are a real challenge, they feel more like an amalgamation of all the things you learn up to that point.
