If you’ve played a rogue-lite, you’re already accustomed to the situation. It’s a bureaucracy, the same as the DMV or County Clerk. Have A Nice Death relishes in its setting, framing death (lowercase d) as something inevitable but funny. Hung, the first you’ll come across, appears as a hanged man until you interact with him and realize that the rope around his neck is actually the sentient one in that situation. As you move through the company, you’ll come across thanagers (Thanatos/Managers), the middle management of the afterlife that serves as mini-bosses. There is a whole supporting cast of weirdos in Have A Nice Death. Shaw your head of H.R., is there to provide you with helpful/hurtful curses. There’s your constantly hyped-up intern, on his 400th intern contract and ready for another. There are plenty of sympathetic ears in your company. You’re setting off on a journey across your sprawling business to correct your wayward employees. This is where you start in Have A Nice Death. Throwdown the soul reports and get your scythe. They’ve turned their back on who they view as a relic, wasting away on the top floor in their office. You’ve put people in place for this, but they’ve forgotten who runs this place. Souls aren’t being reaped properly, the souls that are reaped aren’t being processed properly. That is, until one day you realize things aren’t getting done.

A force of nature is reduced to idle watercooler chatter. Your lust for the dark work of reaping souls has been replaced by a lust for dark coffee. Once a towering force of nature, a god walking amongst the sheep, you’re now about 3 feet tall, trading in your fearsome scythe for a three-piece suit. Why not outsource that to someone else? The afterlife isn’t running short on souls to help.Īfter so many years of building up his business, Death has grown soft and gotten short. Why should you have to reap by yourself when you can hire some lost souls to handle it for you? There’s a lot of paperwork that goes into processing the dead. After years of reaping all on your lonesome, you decide that death (lowercase d) can be treated as a business. There is nothing particularly new that Have A Nice Death does, but it excels in the basics you would expect in a rogue-lite experience. Thankfully, Have A Nice Death avoids the competition by rising way high above it. It takes a lot to stand out in this cutthroat genre war.

Almost daily, a new entry into the genre is announced. The market for 2D side-scrolling rogue-lites is as saturated as ever. Have A Nice Death Early Access Review – Rest In Paperwork

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