Death Kid Review

A Tense Defence vs Overwhelming Waves

Death Kid is a roguelike that sees you defending three souls from waves of enemies as they open the way to subsequent floors of a dungeon. Every time you die, and you will die, you are sent back to the start to try again. A very simple premise matched with simple yet exhilarating gameplay. 

You survive your way through eight floors, each with their own unique enemies and strategies. The cog that starts the wheel of life and death is supposedly sealed away at the very bottom of this dungeon. Guided by a suspicious figure with one eye, it is your job to find the cog and any more secrets this place may hold.  

Amazing Animations with an Unorigional Artstyle

Straight away there is a strong sense of atmosphere. The visuals, music, and emergent storytelling all hammer home the feeling that you are out of your depth. 

The opening sets a dimly lit stage focusing in on your character, centred and hidden in shadow. Then a really nice animation plays of him opening up a jar that explodes into souls, lighting up the area to reveal a horde of monsters charging towards your now revealed player character. The music goes from a backing beat to a building riff that sets the grimdark tone perfectly. Great direction meshing really nicely with good art and sound design to create an epic spectacle. This level of direction holds up throughout the entire run-time.

Animations are a real high-point when playing Death Kid. My favourite example is when the one-eyed mentor extracts multidimensional bone marrow from an extinct species that, when interacted with, throws you back through time. It looks and sounds as gruesome and oddly satisfying as you’d expect: fluid clinging to the bone, twanging as it snaps loose and with a sci-fi, electrically charged, blue explosion the player character disappears through time, leaving the one-eyed mentor spinning through the air to land, dust falling around them as their shoulders sag. 

Yes it is repeated every time you die, yes it is one of the few examples of the animations used in the storytelling, but god dammit was there so much love put into it. 

Some pixel art games can lean a bit too far into stop motion animation, but Death Kid keeps things fluid and moving, a reminder that you are playing a modern title even with the ageing art style. 

However, when it comes to overall visual flair Death Kid sticks to very basic and predictable scenery – standard pixel art of classic dark and dingy places like tombs, dark forests, and dungeons. Character and monster design is also very basic – everything looks either straight out of Half-Life, Alien, or Castlevania. The player character is basically the killer from Scream without the exaggerated mouth. A little bit more originality would have gone a long way. 

Intense and Difficult Action

Combat feels incredibly responsive, with smooth attacks and abilities that rarely lock your character into their animations without means of escape, like moving or dodging – a very good design choice for a fast-paced game where one mistake can mean losing a lot of progress. There is a nice range of options too when it comes to combat, with meters to manage, magical ranged attacks, a new ability mapped to every bumper and trigger, and melee attacks with combo variations dependent on input timings. 

The introduction to combat is great, letting you take down some environmental objects by practicing with all of your starting attacks before tossing you in at the deep end. A superb introduction makes it slightly more manageable when presenting one aspect that will put some players off: the difficulty. Obviously high levels of difficulty will also attract some players, and this is especially true for the roguelike genre known for its punishing gameplay. 

You will initially be lulled into a false sense of security upon discovering most enemies largely ignore the player in their pursuit of the souls, centred in the room. However, this is precisely what makes the gameplay so demanding. The souls being centred in circle rooms means that as you deal with one enemy, spawning around the perimeter, there are constantly several others closing in on the souls – you can never safely defeat a monster without worrying about the others, constantly darting your eyes to other areas of the screen to make sure no one is getting too close to the centre. 

To further add to the difficulty, your soul’s health is consistent between floors meaning that if you falter for even a second on floor one, it could be your undoing on floor ten!

Enemy Animations and Variety

Although often quick, most enemy attacks are well coordinated. Some can be too subtle on the windup, but this is rare and they are still easy enough to dodge. Enemy variety between floors is incredible, mixing up abilities and gimmicks, changing how you approach each enemy. Some require an evasive approach, using lots of dodging. Others require a more offensive approach as they mindlessly waltz towards your souls. Some may even hold shields requiring you to backstab, whilst others may have shields that require you to break a nearby robot. These variations, although great, are pretty standard and aren’t the reason I hold Death Kid’s enemy variety in such high regard. 

Upon death certain enemy corpses can be picked up and thrown. Cool, but not the reason it works so well – it’s how well this system incentivises players to interact with the game’s systems that is so well done. Consider this: due to how enemies spawn far apart, your ability to perform an AOE attack is limited, so the developers designed an enemy corpse that, when thrown, creates a black hole effect that sucks in and clumps together nearby enemies, perfectly setting up for your AOE attack – brilliant. This is just one example of many corpses that can be thrown for varying effects

2D Clunkiness

Due to Death Kid’s 2D environment, Basic player attacks that don’t require a resource are restricted to either left or right, a slight issue when enemies could come from above or below – ending up looking and feeling a little clunky. Thankfully amazing hit registration, both technically (via hitboxes) and visually, save this from being a massive issue. 

Backstabbing is a mechanic that allows players to deal more damage if striking an enemy from behind, and besides the ‘left or right’ combat system making it a little unwieldy, this system is handled really well. Intentionally or unintentionally, backstabbing presents an interesting dilemma that players have to solve mid-fight – due to the knockback from your attacks, backstabbing an enemy will often send them slipping closer to the souls they are headed towards. So, a decision: backstab an enemy, hoping you can kill them before you push them too close to a soul or, hit them face on, dealing less damage but pushing them away from the souls. This keeps combat from becoming mindless mashing. 

Overall when you get into the flow of dashing behind an enemy, backstabbing them, dashing towards the next whilst dodging a projectile and retaliating with your own – it’s good fun. 

A Big Issue with Progression 

Death Kid chooses to not provide any loot or upgrades mid-run, as you’d find in other roguelikes. When it comes to unlocks and stat upgrades, pretty much necessary for a game that is restricted to one identical room, Death Kid chooses to go down a more roguelite route.  Ability unlocks and stat upgrades are largely locked behind dying, where you are sent back to a hub zone and can access an upgrade book. 

The stat upgrades are just flat ‘number go up’ investments but the ability unlocks are great implementations, being satisfying, useful, and most importantly, they look sick. Testing out these new abilities mid-run is a major reason why Death Kid’s gameplay doesn’t feel insanely repetitive. 

Now, my biggest issue with the game. Enemies are too tanky before you start upgrading your stats, often taking more than one combo to kill. At first I thought this issue was rectified upon unlocking my first damage upgrade. This fixed the issue for the floor I had just lost on but, the issue was just presented again on the next floor. This loop dips dangerously into the territory of feeling like the game is artificially limiting your progress to increase play-time. 

One of the appealing features of a roguelike is the idea that ‘any run could be the one that sees you win.’ Unfortunately, Death Kid makes this near impossible due to the necessary stat and ability upgrades you need to progress. To achieve the ‘any run is the run’ feeling, you somehow have to not get overwhelmed by a horde of seemingly immortal enemies that only get tankier as you head down the floors. 

Narrative, or Lack Thereof 

Much like most roguelikes (besides Hades) the narrative is a by the book, standard story which only serves to set up the gameplay. Evident as early as the opening exposition, Death Kid continued to remind me that I was playing a video game, even when trying to explain the backstory of its world, ruining my immersion a bit. 

I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything being explained had to have something to do with gameplay, and only the gameplay. It felt like there was depth there but I was only allowed to swim in the shallow end. For example the secondary main characters, the souls, seem to be conscious and so I kept questioning why they would want to be kept in a jar to do the protagonists bidding, putting their life on the line. This is never answered. 

There are some not-so-subtle hints at a larger mystery, such as this dialogue between you and the one-eyed mentor: “your enemies may be artificial,” “what do you mean artificial?” – intriguing. Again sadly this is never answered – well at least the character’s questions aren’t being answered either. Nevertheless the mystery does continue with a horrifyingly spooky mid-game cutscene, presented masterfully, and snagging on the player’s growing suspicions. 

Small Graphical Concern

Lastly a small graphical issue I had: The ‘rage’ meter fills up a circle before you can unleash a powerful transformation. Sometimes the circle can look fully filled up when it isn’t, causing you to attempt to activate the transformation to no avail. Because the animation to activate this is so long, you can be punished during the windup and not even get the transformation for your troubles – frustrating.

A Nicely Presented But Undercooked Roguelike

Death Kid provides exciting gameplay with some especially lovely attention to detail when it comes to enemy design and variety. The animations are always stellar, but I left wishing the story was a bit less surface level. Seeing the developers artificially limiting progression is a real let down, putting a dampner on my dopamine. Having said that, if you are someone that can look past this issue, as it is becoming increasingly common, then Death Kid is still a satisfying and rewarding experience that feels amazing to beat. 

Important Links

Death Has Never Been More Metal: Death Kid Launches on Xbox – https://www.thexboxhub.com/death-has-never-been-more-metal-death-kid-launches-on-xbox/

Buy Death Kid on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/DeathKid/9PJ3R69QJ903