Death’s Door

The Legend of Zelda all too often serves as a jumping off point of comparing and contrasting a vast number of adventure games. I suppose it’s difficult to separate how influential Link’s 35-year journey has been and how many developers around my age grew up slashing at Ganon with the Master Sword and have been inspired to make their own narratives about heroism.

Acid Nerve’s Death’s Door at its core is like those Zelda games: a tale of exploring foreign lands and taking on any number of beasts in hopes of achieving a greater purpose. But here, our hero isn’t donning a green cap. Instead, he’s a tiny crow, a Reaper who takes the souls of the dead from their colorful worlds to one of black and white. He uses swords and daggers and hammers to fell frog kings, fire-spitting plants, blobs of goo, and granny witches obsessed with pots, just to name a few.

I can imagine many wandering through the world of Death’s Door and feel the glisten of Souls on their tongues just as much as Nintendo’s epic. After all, aren’t we collecting the souls of the dead to level up the abilities of our avian friend to better dole out death in more dire circumstances? I mean, sure. If you want, Death’s Door is like Dark Souls if one of them was an isometric-ish action game… and I guess there was Eileen the Crow in Bloodborne. But what game isn’t like another game if you squint your eyes and think about it too hard?

What about the key art? Those characters look like Hayao Miyazaki’s illustrations! Is Acid Nerve really doing anything original here?

While playing Death’s Door I thought about all these jumping off points of critique and how a wider audience might respond to it. What will the average player feel when dodging between wizard spells and juggernauts with hammers? I’m not trying to act high and mighty with my finger waggling in the air about avoiding the most common references around. Yet I know how these things work. As a player who grew up with Nintendo and has cut their teeth on many a difficult action game, Death’s Door‘s DNA does not elude me.

But damnit, this is an inspired game. Literally and figuratively.

Death’s Door‘s quaint, quirky, and engaging aesthetic hits players from the start. The stylish world prefers to speak with a smooth palette of color rather than granular detail. Surfaces and objects appear to be smeared with varying hues to make them appear cartoon- or clay-like. At first, it may not be the prettiest or most pleasing thing on the eyes, yet it begins to grow on you. It makes objects pop during exploration but never distracts from combat. The world of Death’s Door, in which the reaping of souls is 9 to 5 job for crows, feel distinct and expansive, even when visiting familiar locations. Players will come across a submerged town, mushroom- and thorn-laden forests, a steampunk factory, an opulent manor, and other distinct locales that games take liberties with. This is a world that is at times dreary with age and death but remains a fairy tale nonetheless.

The framework for Death’s Door is about your tiny crow working for the Reaper Commission. The Commission is similar to the everyday office: an overbearing boss, an accountant gleefully obsessed with numbers (workplace accidents mean more paperwork!), and dusty rooms that once housed former employees but now contain hidden lore. Crows reap the souls of those unwilling to pass on from this mortal coil and those crows who unsuccessfully reap a given target are stuck, growing old and susceptible to death. That exact fate befalls the player.

After reaping a particular nasty soul, our crow is knocked unconscious by a much larger, much greyer crow who steals the soul. What transpires is a humble tale that features ruminations on death, clever punches of dark humor, and a whimsical sense of place.

Death’s Door never becomes overly grim, a thankful blessing considering how adorable many of its characters are presented and named–I’m looking at you Pothead and Steadhone. Players may be harvesting the souls of devious imps to increase their power but the game never bears too heavy of a metaphorical burden. I loved how Acid Nerve presented the gateway between the Reaper Commission’s world and the various environments in the game as literal doorways. In fact, the Grey Crow is seeking the assistance of the player character to open the titular Death’s Door, having been abandoned by the Commission.

Why did the doors to these imaginative worlds suddenly close, abandoning the crow reapers to suffer? The game never presents a story too elusive to follow but does trickle narrative leads throughout the journey, making for an intriguing solution. Along the way, the cast of characters will engage with the player, never acting too funny nor too serious.

It’s helpful that Death’s Door is a truly inviting game. With an atmosphere more dilapidated than oppressive, players will become swept up in the moody pianos that capture the feel of their particular biomes. But Acid Nerve has also opted for friendly and, at times, frantic gameplay that won’t bog down those wishing to mildly coast through a new adventure.

Would it be weird to call Death’s Door’s combat cozy? I don’t think so. Fighting against an assortment of creatures is only rarely frustrating, as I became acclimated to its ins and outs almost instantly. Players aren’t hacking away at enemies in a war of attrition. Instead, fighting is about figuring out how many times a weapon can be bashed against an unfriendly face before it becomes time to move. Despite bordering on floaty, melee hits have a weight an impact, the dodge feeling justly responsive.

The crow can use a charged attack and an attack used after a dodge. I rarely engaged with these two moves, often forgetting they existed in lieu of merely mashing the attack button as fast as I could. A secondary attack exists as a ranged spell or move that uses up one or more charges that can only be refilled after hitting an enemy with a melee weapon. There’s a simple balancing act on engaging up close or from a distance and players will spend little time trying to understand proper placement.

Though I could argue that Death’s Door may be overly simple, its insistence on not throwing too many systems at the player keeps the game grounded rather than convoluted. Players will interact with small puzzle moments, having to light torches at proper moments and what have you. Action is broken up by moments of exploration and thinking, or sometimes opposing elements blend together. I fondly remember a section early on in the witch’s domain where I moved along a conveyor belt having to properly light furnaces to move pistons out of the way while avoiding poisonous blasts from an enemy on the other side.

Death’s Door has a pocketful of ideas and so many of them work because of their familiarity with gaming lexicon. Its isometric view is not far removed from the top-down perspective of the 8- and 16-bit eras. Its simplicity belies a sense of polish found in the better indie games of the past two generations, obviously forged in the fires of developers who grew up playing this stuff.

Even the various shortcuts and side paths that players unlock and reveal over the course of the game aren’t necessarily a revelation from the past decade or so. Death’s Door amplifies players’ desire for adventure by throwing forks in the road nearly every screen. Teases for pathways blocked by unclaimed loot sprout almost immediately after the game’s introduction. I was constantly seeking out a secret path that might lead me to an out of place collectible.

Because Acid Nerve is constantly pushing the player to uncover something new, Death’s Door never agonizes with its difficulty. After death, the currency used to upgrade the core four attributes is never lost. Players recover health by planting seeds in pots that refresh after returning from the Reaper Commission, upon which enemies also reset. These seed pots are frequent enough and helpful appear before tough fights so as not to torture the player. It’s incredibly forgiving, to a point.

The handful of boss fights in Death’s Door are usually preceded by difficult combat sections. And bosses dish out waves of new attacks meant to test what the player has earned and learned in the past couple hours. There are a few particularly challenging moments that may frustrate, especially the onslaught players must fight before receiving a new magic spell or skill that will allow progression to a new area.

Despite its numerous triumphs, I think Death’s Door‘s length will be a sticking point for many. Let it be known that this is a refreshing, delightful game and a wonderful new IP. But I do think it is over far too soon, especially considering gameplay time can be extended by a bit of aimless wandering.

For a large part of the game, players will be stuck with four hit points and four magic charges. Upgrades to increase damage, speed, spell damage, and attack charge time become exponentially expensive and most enemies reward paltry amounts of souls. There are four magic attacks and five weapons. No skill trees, only a few movement upgrades. If players want to increase their efficiency and lifespan, a lot of backtracking may be needed.

While I did not find Death’s Door particularly difficult, the quest to achieve 100 percent completion can feel somewhat tedious without a proper map. Later in the game, players will be granted hints at undiscovered riches but the most curious will seek out secret paths after earning a new skill. It will be worth it to discover everything the game has to offer but it will still take most under 15 hours to see everything.

Often I hate to feel grumpy about a game’s length but there are times when a game being too long or too short can be a problem. In a way, I think Death Door is a perfect length. It never wears out its welcome. But there are moments where the map felt like it could have been trimmed due to excessive empty space or far too roundabout secrets. But then that would have made the game even shorter.

Death’s Door‘s brisk and satisfying story pace allows players to soak up the adventure with efficiency and delight, never dragging on because of complicated puzzles and strenuous combat. Ultimately, though, I never wanted Death’s Door to end because this is an immensely satisfying, lovingly constructed world Acid Nerve has made. Both a fairy tale and an epic journey, it’s packed with wonder and whimsy. Anyone who has a love for gaming will recognize something they adore in Death’s Door. This universe is too good to resist and it is my sincere hope that this first taste won’t be the last.