Have a Nice Death is a fun 2D roguelike that combines the gameplay of Hades with the style and aesthetics of Hollow Knight combined with plenty of office jokes and fast-paced combat.
Ah yes, the daily grind. Every day we are expected to wake up in the morning, get to work, do our jobs, and head home. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. We are expected to do this until we die, well in this case even after. Have a Nice Death is a 2D side-scrolling roguelike developed by Magic Design Studios and published by Gearbox Publishing which is also the publisher of games such as Risk of Rain and the developer of the Borderlands series.
In Have a Nice Death we play as, well, Death. You see Death has been having a hard time reaping all the human souls on Earth. So he decides to enlist the help of some of his employees, the Sorrows, to give him a hand with all the reaping, leaving Death to just fill out the paperwork. Everything works out fine, a little too fine in fact, as the Sorrows have gotten a little carried away and Death now finds himself being worked to the bone and drowning in paperwork. The overworked reaper decides to put his foot down and put his workers in place.
In Have a Nice Death, you will be able to slay the lost souls that have started overrunning the Underworld in various ways. From slicing and dicing with Death’s scythe or sickle, using a ranged or heavy secondary weapon, or using infernal magic, Death has plenty of tools at his disposal. The combat feels fast, snappy, and oh-so-satisfying. You will quickly be able to rack up a pretty good combo and mow through your enemies. Keep in mind, however, what abilities you start out with depends on the run to run.
Navigating the various floors of the Afterlife. Much like its combat, movement in Have a Nice Death is smooth and incredibly fluid. Death is quickly able to jump and dash his way onto the various platforms dotting the macabre office environments. The environments themselves are quite open, meaning there is plenty of maneuverability. It allows players to easily move around their environments and get to hard-to-reach places to get pick-ups, such as Anima, that they will use to restore their lost health.
You see, Have a Nice Death is a roguelike, similar to the game Hades. Meaning that when you “die” you will return to your Hub area. In this area, you will be able to buy equipment, upgrade skills and abilities, and well as prepare for your next run. Speaking of Hades, much like in that game, every time you “die” you unlock more dialogue with your various employees and can also take on requests and contracts.
You’re probably wondering what contracts are. When Death makes a contract, it is similar to a regular request you can get from NPCs, except there is a bit of a catch. In Have a Nice Death, when you make a contract, there are certain rules that you will have to follow if you wish to get the reward and complete said contract. However, if you fail to fulfill the contract, you forfeit the reward and are given a debuff during that run, which will most likely cut your run very short.
Due to its roguelike nature, what skills you get during a run depends entirely on luck. Most Death’s loadout in Have a Nice Death will change during every run from Curses, to secondary weapons, to spells and buffs; nothing will stay the same each run. However, the more you level up, upgrade your hub, and complete requests, the more permanent buffs, upgrades, and discounts you have access to, making each run easier than the last.
The various upgrades and equipment you buy in Have a Nice Death can easily be obtained through Ingots. Players obtain Ingots by earning Soulary, which can be obtained by destroying various orbs containing it or by slaying enemies. Once you reach the end of your run, depending on how many souls you reap, you will earn a certain amount of Ingots. However, you can also use your Soulary to buy things at the shops you will encounter during your runs.
Players have complete freedom in deciding how they want to play Have a Nice Death from how they want to move around the map to what skills they want to start with. The game encourages player creativity and allows them a level of freedom that is quite surprising, considering that the game is a 2D side-scroller.
Besides its gameplay, Have a Nice Death is just a charming game. Each character you encounter is a different parody of the various corporate office stereotypes, from your shy and sweet pumpkin-headed personal assistant, Pump Quinn, who may have a crush on you, to the overzealous and ever-encouraging Harriet, who is your business coach, who just so happens to be a flayed corpse. There are even parodies of certain popular characters, such as Edna Mode from the Incredible.
Despite being dead or mutilated, these charming characters never come across as creepy and unnerving. In all honesty, they are quite adorable and work incredibly well with its art style, a mix of Tim Burton meets Hollow Knight. Much like the aforementioned Hollow Knight the game is presented entirely in black and white.
This monochrome art choice works with the Have a Nice Death’s gameplay as color is used very sparingly. This helps differentiate the various things happening on screen as everything has been given its designated color. Purple for Death, blue for good, and red for bad. This makes sure players never lose track of anything, especially with the game’s fast-paced gameplay.
The game’s environments are also just drop-dead gorgeous. The various floors of the Afterlife are completely procedurally generated, meaning what players will encounter will be different every time. Procedurally generated environments can run into the issue of not flowing correctly, making maneuvering through them feel like a bit of a chore. That is not the case with Have a Nice Death as despite being procedurally generated, you never lose your flow.
Despite the themes of death and dying, the game isn’t a very serious. This is most evident in the game’s soundtrack. The music for the game is composed of goofy Halloween music for maximum spookiness. The music also shifts and changes to work with the different levels of the Afterlife. An overgrown jungle level will include more musical elements, such as wooden flutes and bongos, and a boss level will up the intensity to get you pumped.
However, despite its rather silly and cartoony presentation, Have a Nice Death does touch on topics of death, office place bullying, worker exploitation, burnout, overworking, and suicide, due to these topics and how they are presented. This may turn off some people from playing the game, especially if they are sensitive to those topics.
Have a Nice Death is a wonderfully fun roguelike with its snappy, fast-paced combat and adorable, cartoony character design and music. The game encourages you to be creative with how you play. The game may not be for everyone as it does deal with a few heavy topics. Overall the game is a must for fans who enjoyed the gameplay of Hades and the art style of Hollow Knight. Have a Nice Death is currently available on Steam.
