Between “worldwide exclusive,” that “World premieres“, The celebrity guests, the musical performances, the uh, questionable musical performances, and the handful of actual rewards, last night’s four-hour screening The Game Awards 2021 was a lot. Amid the cacophony, you could easily have missed one of the coolest debuts of the evening: Have a good death, a 2D roguelike with quirky humor and a quirky art style.
I know, I know… “Why does every new game have to be a roguelike with quirky humor and a quirky art style?”
Counterpoint: There can never be enough roguelikes with quirky humor and quirky art styles. And if that’s your bag Have a good death seems to be a good fit. In case you missed it, see for yourself:
Have a good death, developed by France-based Magic Design Studios, with Perfect World Entertainment as publisher, will fill you as CEO of an afterlife organization. In the midst of a death wave, you find yourself overworked and overloaded, your desk heaped with kilometer-high piles of processing papers. Instead of delegating one of these tasks to your employees, you decide – again, repeating here, a CEO – to “do it yourself”.
Yes, Have a good death is not entirely realistic.
But what it lacks in realism it seems to make up for in gameplay, which looks as fast and fluid as some of the highwater brands in the genre. According to a press release from Perfect World, Have a good death contains more than 30 weapons at launch. There’s a stroke of lines that looks right out of it Hollow knight. And each level – all designed in a hand-drawn art style – is procedurally generated, similar to a certain other buttery smooth roguelike Created by a French independent developer. (In fact, Sébastien Bénard, a developer of Dead cells, advises about Have a good death.)
Have a good death currently has no release date, but is planned for March 2022 for an early access release on the PC. Obviously a one-minute snippet of gameplay doesn’t paint the full picture, but this one is definitely on my radar right now.
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