I've recently had a chance to finally play Death's Death and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I've seen a lot of gameplay footage of this tiny little crow slashing their power sword around and for some reason was convinced this was another of those very cute but very hardcore gaming experiences. Seeing the early boss fights especially seemed intimidating. Is this another Souls like? Do I have the energy to beat my head against high pressure situations where a single missed dodge can cost me a 10 minute fight? Luckily this isn't the case at all. Quite the contrary! I found Death's Door a very pleasant and mellow experience.

For those uninitiated the premise is cute and simple. You are a crow working for an agency tasked with retrieving souls. On one of your big assignments the soul you were tasked with retrieving slips away which has dire consequences for our main character. In this world until that soul is captured and sealed back up in the vault your immortal crow will begin to age. This is how the story starts but there are many twists and turns along the way that are quite clever with one major late game reveal that made me chuckle out loud. The game manages to tackle the difficult subject of death from an interesting point of view that neither makes light of it nor does it get especially morbid. If anything it's quite an uplifting tale that definitely made me stop for a moment and reconsider how I thought about the passage of time. I definitely didn't expect a cute little action game like this to raise such heavy questions so effortlessly.

Whats a good story without good gameplay to back it up? Death's Door is a mix of many genres but at it's heart I would compare it most closely to a classic Zelda more than anything else. This took me by surprise as for whatever reason as I mentioned above I had the game pegged as a Souls-like which it definitely is not. Death's Door is also not really a metroidvania either. You do get abilities that unblock previously inaccessible areas but the progression here is quite linear. Unlike a game like Hollow Knight where the player can get lost quite easily if they're not paying attention, Death's Door is a very straightforward A-to-B experience. From the start you are presented with three branching pathways but you can only really advance in one of them where you will acquire an ability that lets you move forward to the next. One of the common gripes I've heard online is the lack of a map but personally I think that while it would be nice to have one it's not really a deal breaker. The zones are typically small enough that you'll remember where an ability gated pathway was and the structure of the game is such that you're encouraged to go through these zones several times. By the end of the main story I had gone through each zone at least twice looking for any little secrets I had missed and was able to easily internalize and find everything I was looking for without having to consult a guide.

Exploration is in my opinion the bread and butter of Death's Door and is what provided me the most enjoyment from the overall experience. Sure there is a decently robust combat system here as well, but nothing was quite as fun as discovering secret temples or better yet, figuring out a mechanic that made you go “oh so thats what those things are!” and then setting out to find all the places where you can now put your newfound knowledge to use. The game is very good about being obvious when it needs to be and also letting you stretch those brain muscles from time to time. There were never any moments where I felt the secret I uncovered was cheap, no Metroid-like situations where you simply run around the room hitting every single wall hoping to find a false block. Everything is signposted and calculated and the game gives plenty of little nods and clues to help you keep going. There is even an NPC that is dedicated to giving you hints to the whereabouts of secrets at no extra cost.

Death’s Door is in general very pleasant and forgiving in many ways. In recent times plenty of games have adopted the worst types of mechanics from the Souls franchise. It’s like someone thought difficulty is the one takeaway from those experiences and your road to enjoyment should be paved with minute frustrations to better appreciate the final destination. Death’s Door is in turn very laid back. Boss encounters always have a teleport right outside the arena so that you can retry right away or go off exploring and maybe upgrade your abilities. When you die you never lose anything. You keep all your currency at all times. Checkpointing is typically generous and each mini-boss-encounter will have a clear “Retry” button without forcing you to backtrack all the way back to it. While the boss fights are the biggest skill check in the game they never get so outlandish that you’ll be banging your head against a wall for hours on end. Bosses typically feature a few different movesets and after you see them once it’s not too difficult to dial in the pattern and course correct on your next try. I’m far from the best gamer in the world and it took me a max of three tries for each of the main “big bads” in Death’s Door. Even the final cinematic encounter features a very welcome checkpoint halfway through and doesn’t force you to re-do all the phases from the very start. Which is all very welcome. As I wrote in my Ouija piece, I find the trend of games just letting you enjoy them without putting up arbitrary hurdles in your way a very pleasant change of pace. Elden Ring is right around the corner and although I’m sure it will be plenty challenging, even there I’ve heard that FromSoft has started to implement some much welcome quality of life improvements that cut down on pointless runbacks that added nothing to the experience except time added to your endlessly ticking life clock.

The only area where I might have the slightest of complaints in Death’s Door is some of the controller mapping. While combat generally plays out very smoothly, there is a strange system at play when it comes to using your abilities. Each of your spells needs to be primed before it can be released which makes mechanical sense. Being able to spam your arrow spell would make the already very manageable combat a literal cakewalk. That said the way you have to hold down a trigger that plants you in the ground and then choose a direction and use a button that isn’t associated with combat to release your spell messed with my head for some reason from start to finish. There is a traversal ability you unlock later on that was especially maddening to use because of this setup. Weirdly enough the game never makes use of the LB/RB | L1/R1 shoulder buttons which seem like they would be prime candidates to map some of these abilities to. While Death’s Door is not nearly as bad as Psychonauts 2 when it comes to choosing said abilities, having to constantly shift from one to the other with the dpad instead of just mapping them to some button combination felt a little tiresome. I imagine on PC this feels a lot smoother as does the aiming.

When all is said and done though I had a terrific time with Death’s Door. I won’t waste time going over how gorgeous some of the art is - I’m sure you all have eyes and can judge from the screenshots yourselves. I will say that in certain key moments the game breaks away from it’s rigid isometric camera view to great effect and makes me wonder if they ever toyed around with the idea of having a 90 degree shifting camera like Fez did. The main story never outstayed its welcome even though I took a lot of time to hunt down every health and magic shrine and generally speaking combed through the map at least 3 different times. For those that want more there is a secret ending and a whole “post game” world change that is very interesting and leans even heavier into the puzzle solving aspect of the game. If you’re looking for a fun time that won’t stress you out too much while still presenting a decent amount of both physical and cerebral challenge I can’t recommend Death’s Door enough.