Death or Treat – Review
Independent video game studio Saona Studios disagrees with many who think it’s too early to start Halloween festivities in May. Death or Treat is their debut effort, and it’s a 2D hack-and-slash action roguelite game where the friendly ghost, Scary, runs a candy store called Ghost Mart.
The main antagonists of the game are the evil multinational conglomerate Faceboo and its subsidiary companies, which Scary must stop from snatching consumers from the local HallowTown businesses. While the game’s vibrant colours and detailed graphics are stunning, a few bugs and odd design decisions take away from the experience.
To begin, let us state the obvious: Death or Treat is visually striking, what with its hand-drawn animations and endearing art style. Both the aesthetics of the world and the diversity of its enemies benefit from the Halloween-themed colour schemes. DarkChat’s dark factories, RipTak’s gloomy tombs, and Faceboo’s corporate offices each have their own distinct feel and atmosphere. This is a “boo-eaty” visual treat, even if it isn’t technically Halloween.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the made-up brands in the game are parodies of popular services like Snapchat, TikTok, and Facebook. At first, I found it funny, but then I realised that the main antagonist’s name is just “F” for “Zuckerberg.” I’m aware of the widespread condemnation of this person and their firm, but I still think it’s tacky to include their views on the subject in a video game.
The game freely acknowledges to being heavily influenced by Hollow Knight and the Ori series, yet it falls far short of those games’ achievements. Despite having an initially smooth and natural feel, combat ultimately loses a certain snappiness. The game fails to live up to its potential because of some problematic design choices.
To begin with, dashing does not grant any temporary invulnerability, which somewhat nullifies its utility in a game with so much combat. Avoiding enemy strikes is made more difficult by the fact that you cannot cancel out of your dodge animation.
Why you, a literal ghost, can’t pass through environmental platforms yet your adversaries can, is beyond me. The worst of it is that contextual elements meant to offer depth of field obscure your view of where adversaries are coming from.
If your character dies in Death or Treat, you’ll have to start the game over, with the exception of a few pieces of permanent progress. Depending on the decisions made during the run, each subsequent playthrough should call for a unique set of tactics. However, there is a lack of variety and customization options because each zone only introduces one new passive ability, and most of those abilities are merely numerical boosts that enhance life or damage.
Death or Treat makes it challenging to obtain healing supplies because they are so rare and randomly generated, despite the fact that health and healing are crucial components of roguelite games. In addition, there are no life-stealing skills or potions available for purchase. While regaining full health after killing a monster is nice, healing items are scarce and you’ll have to make do with what random foes drop if you want to stay alive.
Death or Treat’s ultimate goal is to restore HallowTown, which serves as the game’s eternal progression. You can open stores and buy upgrades and weaponry with the materials you collect from foes during your runs. The mechanics can be too tedious, though, and you’ll get punished for playing well and going on long runs.
When you go on a run, certain foes will drop materials that you can utilise to your advantage after you return to town. You have to throw away valuables because you can’t keep them all, but space is limited. If you reach the item limit during a run, this effectively encourages you to die on purpose and start over. It’s unclear to me whether this peculiar design decision was intended to encourage frequent game play or not.
In Death or Treat’s early going, you’ll have access to a single weapon and three skills at most. The cost of acquiring upgrades is expensive, therefore it will take a large number of runs to unlock all of the game’s abilities and weaponry. There are just four areas in the game right now, and each one culminates in a boss fight. These bosses have special attacks and movements, and if the player isn’t careful, they can wipe them out in a matter of hits.
Death or Treat operates well enough for an independent game, with reasonable load times, although it suffers from frame dips and freezes during frantic action sequences. The player’s actions may be delayed or never take place if the game fails to recognise their button presses. The in-game dialogue language is hard to see because of the font style and small size, which could be a problem for some players.
In spite of its appealing hand-drawn animations and artwork, Death or Treat is let down by certain frustrating game rules and sluggish execution. Despite this, it could be worth checking out if you’re looking for a silly, humorous roguelite to kill time or satisfy an early Halloween craving. You may also try it out for free in a demo version on Steam.
