In Death’s Door, you assume the role of a crow who’s pretty much the Grim Reaper — you’re tasked with collecting souls and taking them to the afterlife. Except things have been slow, and times are hard for both you and the organization. Thankfully, you’ve lucked out and have been tasked with retrieving what’s called a Giant Soul, and things start to look up for our fowl friend. That is until you’ve tackled the first boss in the game, and are about to snag your booty when you get walloped over the head by some jerk who has stolen your prize! Man, you just can’t catch a break, can you? Welcome to Acid Nerve’s newest title, Death’s Door.
Before I go any further, I want to thank Devolver Digital for providing me access to Death’s Door, where I was able to play two hours of the game. Sadly, it simply wasn’t enough time as I had become engrossed with the game and didn’t want to stop. The folks over at Acid Nerve have crafted a game with DNA from its prior title, Titan Souls, all while adding more gameplay elements from other games such as The Legend of Zelda and, dare I say it — Dark Souls.
Simple, but hard to master, Death’s Door is a challenging action/adventure title, all while being cutesy as well. The game is played via an isometric view, giving you a nice view of the action. For the most part, it works, except for a few times where the camera and the foreground obscured my view.
What’s funny to me is when you die, if you’ve played any of the Soulslike games, you’re familiar with the “You’ve Died” screen. Here, it simply says “Death,” and the first few times I saw that screen, I cracked up. I still don’t know why I found it so funny. Maybe because the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, unlike another gaming series I know, or perhaps I’m losing my mind. It’s possibly the latter.
It’s not just the gameplay that has drawn me in, but also the visuals. Sure, it’s not a next-gen-looking title, but the touches that are scattered throughout the game are amazing. While my time with the game was shorter than I would have liked, I’ve seen enough more than enough to tell me that Acid Nerve wasn’t playing around. For example, there are areas where you’ll walk through a pile of leaves, while the leaves not only move as you traverse through them, with some of them being stuck t your body and falling off outside of the pile. Or watching various critters walking around the backgrounds, sometimes approaching you from the rear and then scattering when you turn your weapons on them.
It’s not all combat, as there were plenty of challenges in the form of puzzles that made me think my way out instead of swinging my sword. Of which I appreciated, I love a game that challenges my wit and causes me to think my way of a situation. I even encountered some interesting characters, including one fellow who goes by the name of Pothead. Now, it’s not what you think — he actually has a pot for a head, the poor guy. He even reminds me of a person I once met in Dark Souls and sort of looks like him as well. I wonder why that is?
After everything I’ve played in Death’s Door, it’s clear to me that Acid Nerve has another winner on its hands. I wish I could go into more detail, but seeing how this is just a preview, I only had a slice of the game. What’s more, I don’t like spoiling fantastic gaming adventures such as this, so you’ll have to wait until the full game is out so you can experience it for yourself. Even now, I’m still trying to find all the secrets that I missed, as well as trying to take down a boss that I have no reason trying to beat, despite being woefully underpowered. I can’t stop playing this game!
Death’s Door releases for the Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on July 20th, 2021. I know I’m looking forward to playing the full game, but what about you? Does this sound like something that you’ll enjoy? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up on Twitter at @Shadowhaxor.
