Death Must Die (PC) Demo Impressions

Another day, another bullet heaven. That’s been my mantra throughout 2023, as I love plugging away at titles like Soulstone Survivors and Halls of Torment on my Steam Deck for hours on end while I feel my characters get stronger after every run. One I’ve had my eye on for a while now is Death Must Die, developed by Realm Archive and taking on a grim, tough-as-nails atmosphere and the tried-and-true playstyle that Vampire Survivors popularized more than a year ago. With the demo out now, how does it fare against the pack?

With hundreds of hours sunk into titles like these, I’m always game for a challenge, and Death Must Die‘s demo provides just that. More importantly, it has a high difficulty, but does so fairly where you’ll lose health to mistakes rather than artificial difficulty. Quite like 20 Minutes Till Dawn, health is so sparse that your runs can end in minutes even with effective kiting (keeping range from enemies). With every subsequent run, though, I felt myself get a grasp of the mechanics and enemy prioritization, as well as figuring out the right upgrade paths for each run.

Past gameplay, Death Must Die has personality in droves. Your upgrades are doled out by deities quite like in Hades, and enemies will make quips here and there to add some charm into their ranks. Its presentation, quite like the aforementioned Halls of Torment, is akin to Diablo, and so is its loot system; You obtain upgrades from higher-level baddies to equip the next run. I didn’t immediately find any Rogue-lite elements in the demo version, but I’m definitely going to need all the help I can get to progress in the early access release of Death Must Die soon – it’s no pushover.

I haven’t met a bullet heaven I didn’t like, and it seems as if Death Must Die is going to be no different. I love that there’s some serious flair in its presentation and plenty of room for me to improve to spare no expense in the “one more run” feel these games give me. Death Must Die launches into early access November 15th on Steam from developer/publisher Realm Archive.