Death's Door test: the creators of Titan Souls return conquerors, but calmer

We love when things go so well. When a game that caught our eye a few months ago shows up, on time, on the doorstep and turns out to be as charming as we had imagined. Death's Door had planted in me the seed of curiosity during an edition of ID@Xbox, at the beginning of the year. Imagined in Manchester by Acid Nerve, it was all the more intriguing. But the duo responsible for the captivating Titan souls was he going to avoid the “second album syndrome”?

I wish the suspense lasted a little longer, but the title of the review kinda sucks. Yes, Death's Door is for Mark Foster and David Fenn the game of confirmation. Six years after their first achievement − designed as part of a game jam − the two friends are re-establishing themselves as major players in independent gaming.

Death's Door test: the creators of Titan Souls return conquerors, but calmer Lire la conclusionDeath's Door

A well-crafted Zelda-like
More accessible than it seems...
Artistically successful (these musics…)
The character palette

Unoriginal gameplay
… at the risk of running out of challenge
Some readability issues
A somewhat simplistic narrative

Reaper, reaper, if you're champion...

Like a Monday, we get on the bus taking us to the office for a hard week of work. But the crow that we play does not have quite an ordinary job. Him, his thing is to go and fight wandering souls to get them to the afterlife (we hope he has good health insurance). The atmosphere is quickly set, and the contrast between the apparent normality of the infrastructure and the incongruity of the tasks to be accomplished quickly makes us smile.

Employed by the Commission of Reapers, we are charged by the Master of the Gates in person to collect a particularly twisted soul. But another crow pulls the rug out from under us just before we accomplish our mission. Problem: Impossible for a Reaper to return to the "real" world until he has delivered the soul assigned to him. No choice, we'll have to work overtime. In this case, beating the countryside in a world where human beings no longer exist, but in which every soul that “lives” wants to kill you.

The game is organized in a very organic way. Like Dark Souls (the name is dropped), you can access the entire Death's Door map from the first level of the game. Several biomes represent the "chapters" to be closed in order to progress, and we obviously unlock certain abilities that encourage us to retrace our steps in order to explore more (yes, it's a grappling hook).

Here, the “campfires” are doors through which you can return to the Reaper Commission to quickly move between the different checkpoints and spend your souls to improve your skills. Rest assured, we are not in a From Software game or in Hollow Knight. If you die, you simply respawn at the last activated door (there are many) and you keep your change.

A real Zelda-like

So easy, Death's Door? Let's qualify our response. Acid Nerve's new game is immeasurably less punishing than Titan Souls was. But this is largely due to its concept: in the latter, we fought bosses armed with a single arrow that had to be picked up after each shot. And the slightest blow suffered marked the game over.

Here, we find a structure much closer to what a Zelda offers. You have 4 life points and 4 magic points, and you can increase these gauges by collecting heart receptacles, shards of vitality or magic shards. The altars provided for this purpose are also quite well hidden, and will require you to be very observant to find them all and therefore improve your chances of survival.

JVFR

You will have to solve some not very bad puzzles to progress.

JVFR

Some enhancement altars are very well hidden.

But, in any case, the opportunities for treatment are not lacking. You recover your whole life as soon as you go through one of the doors (the enemies then reappear), or if you plant a seed (a collectible) in a pot provided for this purpose. The flowers wither after use, but grow back each time you return to the same level.

The gameplay loop does not offer anything fundamentally new overall. You have to explore each area until you find the entrance to the dungeon, then solve a series of puzzles to unlock a new skill and, finally, go defeat a boss.

JVFR

The bosses logically represent highlights of the game.

The loot? At the risk of disappointing Diablo fans, it is almost non-existent in Death's Door. In total, you can get your hands on 5 different weapons, which offer a range of blows and specific characteristics (extension, damage, charged attack, etc.). Different collectibles are also spread throughout the map, and allow you to better understand the game's universe thanks to enigmatic descriptions. We wonder where Acid Nerve got all that.

JVFR

The universe of Death's Door is told in particular via the description of objects.

JVFR

Some weapons are definitely worth the effort to get.

An academicism that suits him well

We laugh nicely, but Death's Door, if not of a crazy originality, is excellent in its ability to digest its influences to keep only the best. Everything fits together wonderfully; the challenge is sometimes a little higher, but never insurmountable, and we appreciate improving our character to see the new effectiveness of a weapon or a spell on an enemy that we previously had trouble falling.

However, the game suffers from some readability issues that sometimes hinder us in understanding an enigma. For example, I didn't realize until the very end of the game that these floor plates weren't actually teleporters that I wouldn't have figured out how to use yet, but manhole covers that open. by making a dive attack from above.

JVFR

Death's Door is sometimes a difficult game to "read".

Similarly, I would have appreciated having a map at my disposal. As long as you are an orientation ball, you will sometimes find yourself frustrated not knowing where to go. Especially since the field of vision offered by this isometric view rarely allows you to take a step back from the environments of the game.

Luckily, the fights do not suffer from these little oddities. Simply choreographed, they nevertheless showcase a variety of dancers, who confirm Acid Nerve's ability to design characters that will be remembered for a long time. If the duel that opposes us to a real moving castle will remain in our memory, it is less for its difficulty (quite childish) than for the beauty of its realization.

JVFR

Some clashes are memorable.

But for my taste, Death's Door lacks a touch of madness in its game mechanics. In itself, you can perfectly do without using this or that gadget to get rid of your opponents. The boss pattern isn't rocket science either. The result is boss fights which, if they are necessarily impressive, struggle to cause us the slightest tension. In case of failure, we reappear a few steps away to return, as quickly as possible, to the filoche.

Where we did not necessarily expect Death's Door, on the other hand, it is on the side of humor that it deploys throughout the adventure. Even if it depicts a dark universe and that its themes (death, the emptiness of life) do not necessarily invite you to play games, the writing offers here and there moments of downright humor. We think of certain characters (Omar Mitte, whose head has been replaced by … a soup tureen), or even a few lines of dialogue that hit the mark when needed.

With such a varied palette of characters, we find it all the more unfortunate that our avatar is only an empty shell just good for slashing souls. We understand Acid Nerve's desire not to overdo it, and to leave the player the luxury of immersing himself in his universe which, moreover, is a real artistic success, but we remain unsatisfied on the side of the narration. Especially since, to really find out what it's all about, you will have to work to unlock the "true end". A somewhat forbidding, even downright cryptic asceticism, to which very few players will want to comply.

JVFR

The writing is often light, even downright offbeat.

Death's Door : l'avis de JVFR

Necessarily less conceptual than was Titan Souls, the second game from Acid Nerve drives the nail of its talent. Never unfair, Death's Door captivates with its prodigious balance. Located somewhere between references like Zelda, Dark Souls or Diablo, it delivers a rich experience and - above all - very well framed.

Death's Door knows exactly what it's trying to tell you; what he wants you to experience. It does not pull in length and remains accessible. Far more so than was the studio's first game, which in many ways is thrown back into draft form by this one. However, it will be necessary to accept to play something much more classic, the audacity of which lies more on the artistic side than on the gameplay.

No offense to those who saw in Death's Door an ersatz of Hades, it is not so. We can hardly do less rogue-like elsewhere. But it has for him the promise of ten hours of memorable play, and of a universe which, even once the screen is off, and despite an erratic narration, continues to live in you. And there aren't that many of these games.

Death's Door

More academic than was Titan Souls, the new game from Acid Nerve poses as a pure Zelda-like. More accessible than it seems, it offers a memorable adventure in an original universe - although it sometimes has trouble telling itself.