Unusually, the thirteenth door of the Calendar is actually a door, but perhaps best avoided, anything with a scythe against it. It is a very small scythe though…
Feather birds, I guess, catch rogue spirits. Its Door of death!
Brendy Caldwell: You’re the feathered grim reaper in this Zelda-like adventure, the mute crow character in a lighthearted tale that deals with death with a tickled grin. You have a sword, a bunch of dungeons and a team of slick bosses with intriguing attack patterns. In addition, you’ll have a rough ride through a world of girls and sassy girls with serious eyes. In other words, it was single-player bliss on Sunday afternoon. In our swirly ecosystem of combat passes that reward varying degrees of gun frenzy, it’s calm to start a colorful race that won’t demand more from you than earn skill and ability to roll. Well, there’s more to it than that. But not much.
For example, you can shoot arrows or use shotguns to close the distance with enemies. Some abilities you don’t earn until later, but they come at a decent rate and unlock new areas and make fights against cranky mages more varied. You will also need those powers to defeat the bosses (e.g. royal frog, angry Yeti, frustrated granny). Some of these have confusing solutions, others simply require ingenuity and persistence.
And it feels good. Sometimes you see a game that doesn’t necessarily push genre boundaries but adheres to those boundaries in its own special way. Here you’ve got a top-down dungeon world with melee and ranged combat, with a style of movement that any Hyper Light Drifter player will recognize. But the rhythm of the battles, the deflection of the bombs, the balance of the sword swings and arrows – all come together to create a prime example of battle-focused design. , stress. That’s not even counting the puzzles or the humor that sparkles in its dialogue.
This type of game is very rare. I think it’s the SteamWorld Dig 2 phenomenon, where a studio was able to craft a professionally crafted game that was completely within the bounds of the genre and make it beatable in just a few days of leisurely play. If the games boasting more than 80 hours of open-world searches are equivalent to the five-season TV shows that disappear after the first season, then Death’s Door is a three-part miniseries with good writing and a happy ending. reality.
And that text actually adds something. When the bosses died, they would be given a short funeral by a masked cutthroat. There’s the most succinct hint of sadness at their loss, an admission among jokes that the world is a little less colorful without a hint of sensationalism like the Frog King in it, even if it’s a fundamentally improved place. Having at least one boss feels a bit tragic, and in a way, it would be better if your quest to fix this world was unnecessary. But the little crow of death is inevitable. In the same way the Outer Wilds smiled and shrugged at the end of the universe, Death’s Door treats the death of each individual as a trivial obligation. Accompanied, it seems to say, time to die.
Katharine: I arrived at the Doors of Death much later in the year than Brendy, who did excellent rating its back in July, but horrible, this is an absolute gem. Sometimes I have trouble with Soullikes, no matter how far they are from their actual, rock-solid names, but when I told supporters just last week, Death’s Door is 100% my game. The battle is delicious. Your swings and dodges are tight and tight in every appropriate way, and the bosses are tough but incredibly fair. It’s not meant to punish you – it won’t have a checkpoint right away before those big bosses make a fuss if it does – but to coax and advise you to do a little better next time. There are also plenty of clever secrets to uncover if you want to go find them, and oh my gosh, music That’s very wonderful. Don’t sleep on this one, guys.
