Cost:
£1.99 / $2.99 on Steam
Reviewed On: Laptop 1
Review:
Death's Life is evidence that as much
as the industry may seem to have peaked there will always be indie developers
pushing the envelope. This does feel like a new game genre with a definitely
unique grimey art style with it.
Death's Life is a mix of hidden object game and puzzle game that challenges players to create a Rube Goldberg machine of death to kill off various familiar looking characters whose time is up and you as an apprentice grim reaper must make it look like a freak accident. You are essentially playing a puzzle game version of Final Destination really.
Levels tart with you trying to locate the objects required to set up the Rube Goldberg esc machine with the game giving you a handy UI indicator to tell you when you've found the objects. Next you need to adjust them to create the fatal scenario.
Initially the game will have you moving objects between two positions. Later levels introduce slightly more complexity with some objects having 3 positions; there's also turning certain objects on and off; setting objects to run for a certain amount of time; changing the speed of objects and breaking some objects. Once you think you've got the set up right you can press to activate the sequence and see how far you've got. The game will tell you how many objects out of the total are placed correctly but not which ones, though you can do the trick of only moving 1 object and trying again if you're desperate. Certain levels also offer multiple different ways to dispatch the designated victims which leads to a bit more complexity as you try to figure out which objects relate to which of the 2 possible ways to kill the person in said levels.
I will give it credit for having an in game option to change the graphics settings unlike many other unity games that require you to change settings in a pre-game launcher which is fairly uncommon for indie games made in Unity.
In total you'll be through the game in 90 minutes most likely even with the alternative kill paths. There's also little real replay ability to the title. My main gripe really is on some levels it can be hard to see quite where some objects are and some shadows on the floor might have been nice to help with that.
Verdict:
Some nice kills, a unique art style and genre and while only 90 minute or so long it's hard to point to many fault other than 1 and that's if you leave the game to go to the main menu or options menu it doesn't count as finishing the game in one sitting (or at least it didn't for me). Maybe a few more levels or mechanics or something might have pushed it a bit higher score wise but that's really all I can point to as an issue here.Quite who the audience for this game really is other than a weird person like me who'll get most of the references and enjoys puzzle games I'm not sure though.
Composite Score:
Overall Score:
Yes this is a real level in the game