Title: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table Vol. 1
Author: Yushi Ukai (Story), Nekometaru (Characters), BanzakiKotobukiDaienKai (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
Genre: Horror
Publication Date: August 25, 2026
The Story
Do you want to play a game?
Wait. Wrong series… or is it?
Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table is exactly what you are thinking it is from the title, but there is a bit of a twist. One would believe that this may just be an episodic series about players playing death games, and you would be right, but there is a constant among the games… a single player who has survived over two dozen games with a goal of reaching ninety-nine victories.
The first game is Ghost House, and it features six young girls: Kinko, Momona, Yuki, Aoi, Beniya, and Kokuto. Each has their reasons for playing the death game, but it’s Yuki who is the survivor of many previous games, so the group leans on her for how to figure out what to do. Yuki is cautious about oversharing information, but she eventually comes clean and tells them that every death game is different. This one is all about survival. They need to escape the manor, but there is a hidden, clear condition that only she knows about, and she’s not about to share what that is with the group.
From finding keys to unlock a door, to surviving descending saw blades in a hexagonal room, to figuring out how to fit people on a one-time-use elevator with a weight capacity, the challenges here seem to be devilishly orchestrated by the game’s organizers, who are an unnamed group of people who broadcast the death games for pure entertainment purposes.
While Ghost House does get solved, our final volume takes us back in time to get more of a background on Yuki during her ninth death game… Candle Woods. Here, a group of 300 players must survive a group of 30 hunters in a deadly game of Hide and Seek in the woods!
Characters
There isn’t much to Yuki right now outside of what I stated above… she’s simply trying to reach a goal of ninety-nine victories in the death games. We did receive a brief flashback to her past, and needless to say, it didn’t seem as if she had a pleasant time growing up, which could be the motivating factor behind her decision to pursue this lifestyle. She claims to be altruistic during the survival games, but because she knows about the hidden win condition, she takes that altruism to a “necessary evil” level. It’s one of those moral gray areas where she is neither right nor wrong… simply logical. As someone with a lofty goal, you can’t truly blame her for being that way.
I’ll go through these characters a bit quickly because, with the nature of this series, you’re not going to be spending a lot of time getting to know them… and you most certainly aren’t going to get any super deep and meaningful backstories.
Kinko’s goal is to pay off a debt that her father owes because she feels that it is her responsibility as his daughter. She seems poised and level-headed, even if the idea of a death game bothers her.
Kokuto is also a repeat player, but this is only her second game. Her goal is to win the money to cover living expenses because she feels it’s better than being a wage slave. I don’t know about all of that, but hey… to each their own, I suppose.
Momono is someone who feels as if she shouldn’t be there. She was tricked by some woman who offered her a lucrative job, and then she was knocked out and wound up there. Without it being confirmed, it seemed the woman could have been one of the event organizers… or at least someone in league with them… otherwise, why else would a random woman El Kabong her and toss her into the death game?
Beniya said she was aware of the games, but it’s her first time participating in one. She’s there for the same goal as Kinko… to pay off some debt.
Aoi is also a first-time-player; however, she’s super nervous, shy, and just an emotional wreck. Right from the start, she takes Yuki’s advice literally when she said to stick together, clinging to her shirt sleeve as they explore the manor.
Miss Agent is someone we don’t have a name for yet, but she seems to have a business relationship with Yuki. She is the one who summons her for the ninth death game, Candle Woods, and I’m sure she has summoned her for every death game she has participated in thus far.
Hakushi is someone we meet in Candle Woods. Yuki refers to her as “Master” because she, too, has a goal of reaching ninety-nine victories. Since there are two repeat players with the same goal, there must be some level of significance to achieving so many wins that just hasn’t been revealed yet.
Final Thoughts
I will come out and state that I do have one glaring issue with this series… and that is the explanation for the censorship of gore. When one of the characters dies, they notice there is no smell, no blood, and no decomposition. Yuki explains that all of their bodies were tampered with before the death game starts. Their blood is made to solidify as a white substance when coming into contact with the air, and if they live with damage, almost anything on their bodies can be repaired, from reattaching limbs to missing teeth to even their hair. I guess medical science has come so far in this world that playing God is like going to the store for some milk.
That really took me out of the story, if I’m being honest. After all, who doesn’t love a good death game now and then, but to go to such a contrived and unbelievable explanation over the need for censorship was just too much for me. The games and traps around the manor seemed pretty well orchestrated, and the drama was established right from the beginning with Yuki warning everyone to treat everything with caution and that pessimism is your best weapon to survive…. Then, after two of the characters die, which should have been shocking moments, Yuki drops this explanation on us, and you’re left just sitting there reading something that sounds like it was written by a five-year-old’s imagination.
Despite that issue, the games and traps were well-done, and Yuki is an interesting character. Even if the contrived plot device ended up being a solution to one of the puzzles, it kind of felt like lazy writing rather than a clever way to solve a riddle. I’ll continue reading the series because I want to know more about Yuki and why we have two characters gunning for an exact number of victories. I’d like to know more about the organizers and how none of them have been arrested for murder yet. I’m going to guess it’ll be some sort of high-influence group of people with connections to politics or some other typical corruption. We’ll see, though.
The first volume was just okay, but it’s not bad enough to see if it can’t get better.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
