It’s emotionally taxing to send a cute knight off into a stage only to use them as fodder for your puzzle progression, but developer Infinite Monkeys doesn’t seem to care about the weight of your guilt. Quite honestly, that’s for the best because the experience is fun.
The developer has released Life Goes On: Done to Death, a PC puzzle gem, on the PlayStation 4 this week. The entire premise of the game is to sacrifice multiple knights in order to get from point A (start) to point B (holy grail – literally). During this journey to the holy grail, you literally use a knight’s body as a mode of strategy to get a lucky knight to reach a holy grail at the end of a stage. How you use that knight and where you use that knight is the crux of this game. Of course, the real selling point is the strategy you have to concoct to get to the grail.
And believe me, folks, this isn’t a simple game.
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Gamers will run into different types of obstacles on the way to their strategic decision making in regards to how they’re going to use their poor knight’s body. The obstacles come in many forms and when combined with one another, they can make for some unique level design. For example, sometimes the obstacle can be a trigger that unleashes endless fire, which is an obstacle that has to be constantly pressed, say with a body, to turn it on/off. Sometimes it’s a pit of spikes that could potentially impale knights, and often does, which can quickly turn into a bridge of bodies that allow for future knights to cross over. Sometimes its a pit of spikes with an endless fire stream that has a large, yet round monster waiting to devour a knight. The combinations are enormous. There are a lot of different obstacles in the game that could make a knight’s life hell, or at least quick, which include switches, bridges and such in the game that equal out to amusing, yet grisly deaths for the knights, as well as perfect objects that call for truly heads-up strategy.
It’s impressive how well Infinite Monkeys uses these things and how genius, yet difficult they can make some of the levels. Even the early ones are not a cake walk. For example, it took me about 1-2 days to get through the fifth level of the game. It can get ‘that’ difficult sometimes during gameplay. It was a level where I had two triggers (one that controlled fire, one that controlled a spiked platform), a large monster and a large wall of spikes coming down, which was controlled by one of the triggers. How one kills a knight to control (or avoid) each of these things is nothing short of amazing. This level held me up a while, which isn’t typical for a guy like me (maybe a guy like Steve Schardein, but ya know). That said, I don’t consider myself a smart man, but I usually get through difficult puzzles in the span of 2-3 hours. Not this one level and, if you haven’t guessed by that statement, certainly not the rest of the game. Infinite Monkeys really puts forth some effort to make this indie title challenging. This isn’t a quick once through. The level design, while simple visually, certainly brings the swing when it comes to hitting your head hard with complicated goals for grails.
Having said that, this game can get difficult quick. That might be the biggest turn-off for the game. If you’re looking for a game that will simply ‘amuse’ you with ‘simple’ puzzles, this is not that game. It puts you to the test and smacks your hand when you’re wrong, though it doesn’t tell you why you’re wrong (yay?). Life Goes On: Done to Death asks a lot of brain effort on your part to find a way through each level, while dazzling you with spots of humor and multi-tiered monstrosities in attempts to help ease the stress from the well thought out experience. Now, to say there were only a few curse words uttered during the review period of this game would be an incredibly irresponsible understatement.
There were a shit ton.
Anyway, Infinite Monkeys has done a fantastic job with this small title. They have wrapped up the complicated and well thought through gameplay with humor and simplicity. They have certainly made a unique flower in the typically weed-driven world of puzzle games. This is a good game, folks.
On the presentation side of things, Life Goes On: Done to Death certainly won’t sit beside the likes of Uncharted 4, but that’s not what it’s trying to accomplish. The levels are a variety of good lighting, fantastic depth and cartoony textures to keep the seriousness of the title stuck at a humorous level. The knights are something out of a Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon line-up from the 70s/80s (and I would want nothing else), so the visuals help add to the sense of guilt you’ll have killing these poor fellas (or ladies — they might be female, can’t tell because of the armor). In short, visually the game is cute and pretty, but the real details lie in the gameplay. It is the reason why you want to play this game.
At the end of the day is Life Goes On: Done to Death a fun title? If you’re looking for a helluva challenge, then yes. The $12.99 asking price fits the bill for this type of game. You’re almost guaranteed to get your money’s worth from the difficulty that comes packaged with it. If you’re looking for a solid puzzle game with a unique, yet warped twist, then look no further.
Onto the summary.
