Have A Nice Death

(available on Nintendo Switch and PC)
(Switch version used for review)

Over the last few years, it feels like we’ve gotten an abundance of rogue-likes. From recent heavy hitters like Hades and Inscription to more niche like Loop Hero or Crypt of the Necrodancer, even AAA companies have gotten into it like with Deathloop in 2021. This trend doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon as we recently had the release of Have a Nice Death developed by Magic Design Studios and released on 22nd March 2023 for Nintendo Switch and Steam.

In Have a Nice Death you play as the Grim Reaper, Death himself, who’s the CEO of Death Incorporated, a company that specialises in… well death and the many forms that it can occur. As of late his top executives, the Sorrows, have been a little too efficient at their jobs to the point where Death has lost control of his company, a fact that has brought him an endless mountain of paperwork and has led him to the brink of burnout. Now, he must delve deep into the corporation’s departments to sort out his troublesome employees and hopefully finally get the vacation he very much desires. This story isn’t that deep and you’re not going to find the levels of character development that you’ll find in Hades for example. It does mostly act as an excuse for the rampage you’ll go on, but it’s still a lot of fun and the idea alone is something to be praised. 

To start off, I absolutely love the art style and animations. The characters all look and feel like they’re from an animated movie with the black and white aesthetic adding a bit of charm to it, I especially love the look of Death, I want a plushie of that guy so badly. As mentioned the animation is seriously good as well, the different movements and attacks flow very well not just with Death but with the enemies as well. I especially love the backgrounds, they each match the Department you’re traversing such as the mountains of trash you’ll see in the Industrial Pollution Department, or the war torn wasteland in the Modern Warfare Department. While there isn’t voice acting, characters mostly communicate using small sounds that sound like they’re straight out of a Banjo Kazooie game that really matches the vibe the game’s trying to make. Frame rate is fine for the most part, throughout most of the levels it stays very consistent with minimal drops. However, for some reason, at the start of every level the FPS tanks, it only lasts a couple of seconds so it’s not like it affects a majority of the gameplay but it’s still annoying when it does happen. The soundtrack is pretty good as well, while I don’t think it’s anything great I do like the charm it has as it’s very cartoony most of the time and matches the game very well. 

Have a Nice Death is a 2D action rogue-like, which requires you to go through various platform levels fighting numerous enemies along the way. These stages take up the form of different Departments, each one having a theme related to different ways to die. One thing that surprised me is the number of Departments that you can explore, there are eight in total with you being able to pick between which ones you’d like to explore… at least at first, after the first three Departments, you’re pretty much relegated to traverse through the ones the game already has lined up. It’s not really much of a complaint, but it is strange that the game would let you choose the levels you go to only to take that choice away after a couple of stages. Some of these Departments will have their own stage hazards, like fire shooting out of the ground in the Toxic Food Processing Department, or having to turn off fountains to reach the elevator in the Natural Disasters Department, though with most of them the Department will just have the unique theme as well as some enemies that match it. 

For weaponry Death has his trusty Scythe, or perhaps I should say Scythes. At the beginning of each run you get to pick between two Scythes, your regular one or one of the more unique ones that will be picked at random. Each Scythe will have different movesets as well as their own pros and cons to using them and you’ll quickly find which ones you like and dislike. Thus leads me into my first problem, I personally don’t really like the fact that the Scythes you can pick are random. I would understand it if it was like Dead Cells where the weapon variety was incredibly vast and played very differently from each other, but that’s not the case as your weapon pool is very shallow and there’s not enough differentiating the weapons to really warrant it. I would have much preferred it if you could just pick what Scythe you could use right from the beginning of a level, maybe even have me unlock each of them if you want to encourage me to try them all out. 

To go along with your Scythe you are able to find items called Anima, which basically acts as this game’s primary healing items. What makes Anima different from healing items in other games however is that it comes in two different variants, blue and gold. You see, when you’re harmed you have a secondary bar that may go down as you take damage, this bar represents how much HP you can recover by using the Blue Anima, meanwhile the Gold Anima increases not only your HP but also that secondary bar with the caveat that it doesn’t heal you as much. You have three slots for your Anima, and if you collect any Blue while all slots are full then it overlaps and transforms one of your Blue Anima into a Gold. Honestly, I’m not really a big fan of this decision, it feels like it complicates things for the sake of it and I would have much preferred it if this game just had a simple healing system. 

Each level requires you to go through a maze of platforms – which are straightforward in the early Departments but become tougher to navigate through in the later ones – and battle your way through a myriad of enemies as you try to get to the elevator at the end. The variety of enemies you’ll face is surprisingly plentiful, each Department will have enemies that are unique to it and while there are some repeats they do still match with the Department’s theme and may even have an extra attack or two to spice things up. In every level your path will become blocked and you will be forced to battle against a number of enemies before the game lets you continue. When you reach the elevator at the end of the level it will let you decide what floor you’d like to go to next, these floors ultimately dictate what reward you get when you beat it or if there’s a certain gimmick for said floor and will be offered to you at random.

To aid with combat and help you survive as long as you can, you’ll get a variety of power ups called Curses. These will be given to you by Mr. O’Shah, a strange man who lives in a coffin, at the end of the first floor, after defeating bosses/mini-bosses and at the end of levels if you picked his floor at the elevator. One thing I found surprising is the variety of Curses you can gather, from ones as simple as increasing damage and HP, to some more extravagant ones like infusing your attacks with a certain element or having your enemies emit a poison cloud upon death. Be careful though, some of these Curses may come with a price as some of them will also give you a penalty that will negatively affect you, some of these aren’t too horrible as the effects will be pretty minor, however there are some that could completely destroy you run so it’s best to be careful when deciding what Curse you pick. 

On top of the Curses, you are granted Equipment and Spells to help you out. You’ll, of course, get these at the end of floors and potentially after beating a gauntlet of enemies. Both of these act essentially as an extra attack, some with minor effects that do very little damage, while others are completely decimating and will annihilate anyone who stands in your way. The main difference between these two are how they function and how often you can use them. For starters, some spells will normally have a longer lasting effect than equipment do, though because of this they usually won’t do as much damage, and with equipment after using it once you’ll have to wait a second for it to recharge before you can use it again, meanwhile you’re able to use spells as often as you want as long as you have the mana for it and if you run out of mana you’ll have to wait a few seconds for it to recharge. You do start off with a decent variety of both though you can purchase more to be used in your runs from Joe the Office Manager for some Ingots – that you can find in levels and you’ll be rewarded with at the end of a run. 

Luckily it’s not just danger and enemies that you’ll find on every floor, as there are some safe ones where you can relax a little and power up. The first one of these you’ll find is the Shop run by Mark, there you’ll be able to purchase an Equipment or Spell, something to heal you and/or a Curse with some Soulary (main currency gathered by killing enemies or just found throughout the level). The second is the Control Room run by Orville and Jacob, here you can upgrade your Scythe and any other Equipment or Spell by spending either Soulary or a Prisium (a rare item that can be gotten at the end of a level if you pick the floor it’s found on). 

At the end of every Department you’ll face one of the company’s mischievous Sorrows. These bosses focus on you reading attack patterns, timing your attacks well and a lot of trial and error. Each boss fights very differently and requires different strategies to defeat them, like Maxxx using projectiles that act a lot like Medusa heads in Castlevania or Mr. Gordon Grimes utilises long reaching attacks that are best avoided in the air. These fights are a lot of fun and don’t feel cheap at all, it really feels like most deaths were my fault for not fully knowing how the boss works rather than the game being unfair, which is always a good thing. 

Sadly, there is one more flaw with this game, and it’s kind of a big one. Now most rogue-likes aren’t that long. Using Dead Cells and Hades as examples, if you know what you’re doing and get lucky with the build you could finish a run in around twenty to thirty minutes, maybe forty if the run is especially stubborn. This is because those games only have a few levels that can be beaten fairly quickly. With Have A Nice Death on the other hand, I still haven’t completely finished a run and I’ve had ones that have lasted nearly an hour. If you ask me that’s WAY too long for a rogue-like as there’s too much to really make it feel possible to beat it. And because of that, this game gets tiresome quickly, with the other games mentioned it feels like I can do a fair few goes at them because they don’t overstay their welcome, Have A Nice Death however leaves me tired of the game not only at the end of a run but possibly during one as well, especially considering how difficult the last Department is as well. It would have just been better if this game had fewer levels or given me the choice on which Departments to play throughout the game, not just at the start. 

As much as I’ve been praising this game and for as solid as I think it is, I’m likely not going to be replaying it as often as I would some of the other rogue-likes. Don’t get me wrong, it is very good and is a decent amount of fun at first, that enjoyment doesn’t last especially considering how long the game is. I think the main reason for that, outside of the length, is because it doesn’t really do much to differentiate itself from other rogue-likes like Dead Cells for example. I do recommend it if you are a fan of the genre as there is a lot to like about this game, just don’t go into it expecting to have the same love for it as you would something like Hades. 

7.6/10