Death Must Die
Descend the nether in search of Death himself! Choose from God-given powers to slay his hordes of minions. Unlock new heroes, collect powerful items and create game-breaking synergies in this roguelite hack and slash survivors game.
Death Must Die is a action roguelike, bullet hell and rogue-lite game
developed and published by Realm Archive.
Released on November 14th 2023 is available in English on Windows and MacOS.
It has received 19,000 reviews of which 17,578 were positive and 1,422 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 6.89€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Death Must Die into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Death Must Die through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 7 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i3-3210
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 10 capable GPU
- Storage: 3 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: 11 Big Sur
- Processor: Apple M1 or Intel Core i3
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Iris Plus
- Storage: 3 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Updated review at ~25 hrs play time. Original review below. As expected, the game is getting a lot more enjoyable. Builds are coming alive at this point (at least one class if you specialized in it or was nudged in by item RNG), and better knowledge on which blessings are good/bad enable more consistent "wins". This is also showing why veterans are sometimes toxic - they have gotten to figure out what blessings/mechanics are OP and implicitly assume that everyone does as well. Anyone who doesn't abuse OP blessings must simply have "skill issues" so just go into trolling mode. Veterans can start a fresh save and start rolling straight away to dismiss concerns like mine, I can only say that they are confounding "new players" vs "new play throughs". The disparity between blessings and gods are really quite large currently, but I'm sure the devs will balance things better in the long run. For example, in most cases, especially for new players, "Attack" and "Summon" blessings are mostly garbage. Maybe one or 2 points for the mechanical effects, but they will almost never do sufficiently high damage to replace casts, strikes, and power. In the very late game there are exceptions where OP builds scale Attack damage, and this sentence is purely to preempt toxicity from trolls who don't understand nuance of "for new players" which is, again, shockingly common here. There's also a bit of inconsistent or straight up wrong wording popping up, but that's generally rare and not major issues especially for a EA game. At this point I am mostly using 2 classes to farm gear for the other classes to let them more reliably farm skill points. Having a good relic with lots of rerolls and alterations to swap around characters really helps a lot. In my earlier review I projected maybe 10 hours of grinding per class, but really that's only the first 1-2 classes, the others should be much faster, perhaps ~2 hours. I can appreciate that EA development goes in cycles - maybe the devs want to flesh out more of the late game content before revising the early game experience with more structure in place. That's fine, I'm just trying to provide a more comprehensive perspective for buyers to consider. Conclusion? It's a decent game with great potential and well worth the current price, especially if on sale. Maybe limiting exposure to online communities can improve the enjoyment. ============================================ (Original, updated 24/06/24: at ~10 hrs) Mixed review, ever so borderline positive. The things this game does well are pretty clear to everyone, so I will only mention the negatives. Hope the devs don't just ignore all the positive reviews. 1. Early game (~first 10-20 hours!) are a complete nightmare slog. Many times I debated refunding the game, but the later game videos on youtube convinced me to stay. I am still slogging it. This is really the gist of the negatives, below I will highlight some specifics. 2 Classes: 2.1 The developers clearly have a vision for each class' late-game archetype(s), but early game they are just "melee" or "ranged". The classes have no unique identity until maybe 10+ hours of dedicated farming into each one. That's like at least 30-40 hours of grinding the same feeling melee classes before fun is allowed. 2.2. Besides melee classes playing the same, feeling the same, they get completely destroyed in Act 2. Too many big AOE big damage instant nukes. Very classic "Melee gets shafted, only ranged viable" ARPG stuff. 2.3 A lot of the skill tree is padded out by uselessly small generic increments, especially the early skills, further snuffing out the early game meta progression. The major skills that actually impact and differentiate game play are mostly hidden at the very end. 2.4 Devs should consider flipping the skill trees upside-down as a start, then re-optimizing it from there. This enables classes to quickly *begin* developing unique identities and some semblance of player agency and mapping out builds, and also introduces a lot more variety to reduce the early game slog. This leaves the incremental min-maxing stuff to the end. 3. Gear: 3.1 In the early game, gear drops are too rare, starving players of meta progression. Later game, gear drops a bit too much relative to the small inventory. Maybe this is intentional to make the player play make choices? This compounds with the next problem: 3.2 Affixes are almost comically granular, making it such that the vast majority of drops are useless. Don't need separate projectile count types for every single thing, or chances for every blessing tier, for example. Just roll them into a single, more intuitive stat, except maybe Uniques can have special exceptions. This compounds with the next problem (yes again): 4. Blessing choices each level up should increase beyond 3, very quickly. In the game's current state, it should at least be 5 by the time you unlock all characters. The game wants to enable many "different" builds, and thus allow many "different" blessings, but it's too much of a fight against RNG to actually make the builds. If gear were more versatile, playthroughs would feel less cucked by RNG. 5. I admit this is not completely within the dev's control, but also kinda is under their influence. That is community toxicity. Among various other high quality bullet heaven rogue lite style games, DMD's online spaces stand out for being unusually "git gud" spammy instead of being helpful to one another. This might be caused by the COMPLETE disconnect in how veterans see the game vs what a new player actually get presented. There is little middle ground for understanding each other. This is especially odd as the early access nature means little and frequently changing/outdated documentation, the veteran players seem to take pride in gatekeeping information. I hope the dev's could steer the community away from that, somehow. (I think someone gave me the clown award for this, which is ironic...)
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Game is good. The writing and dialogue feels like it came from a millennial that never aged out of 2012 and subsequently became a reddit moderator.
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I think there's been a lot of misunderstanding about this title as is evident by the amount of people who are confused coming into this game in how it is different from other horde based games and not exactly seeing the "meta progression" because ironically; that's how DMD separates itself from the rest of the genre. I'd break the "meta progression" into 3 tiers. Gear, Talents, and understanding a class. One thing that makes horde killers such a great genre is the ability to get as OP as possible and melt enemies in vast different ways and every character has their means to do this in a myriad of fun different ways with different builds. Onto understanding the meta progression in DMD. In my opinion I think the gear is a pretty obvious one and the one you will start to notice as soon as you go from being empty to equipping your first basic piece of equipment. It should be easy to see this because when you finish your run; you keep the loot. In that aspect you could compare DMD to a diablo, or Grim Dawn; with tiered loot that gets insanely better with it's quality and own tier list. Loot can also be shared between characters in the form of rings/amulets/relics so you have an inner mingling of progression, but still get hyped when you hit a mythic with a character you need it for. DMD also creates an easy feel to loot. I don't ever feel I'm unsatisfied with a run and beating the last boss and the loot that drops unlike typical ARPGs. With a massive box to hold all the stuff you're unsure about using or saving for different characters it's easy to see how this is the approach to the first part of the meta progression for the game. Talents are a no brainer. Kill a boss, get a token and the character you played as gets stronger. Instead of paying for passive upgrades for you, the more you play with a specific character the stronger they become. This is a good approach because it creates a progression for each character. I personally enjoy the talents approach because it gives the player something rewarding to seek while the game is still in EA and awaiting content. Finally I think it's unfair that people don't recognize the craft that went into making each character OP in their own special way. I feel this is the third tier of the meta progression "Understanding the character". Each character is able to take X amount of god favor types. This is hinted to you through achievements. For example: Merris has an achievement to summon 40 minions. Which seems like a tall order, until you take into account that she has 2 summon slots, and an epic frost wolf paired with necromancy can put 80 bodies on the field. She also has an achievement to have 4 casts, and the amount of stuff going on the field is just fantastic. To conclude I think what makes DMD so great is it's ability to take the genre into more of an ARPG feel. You dodge, and you have to aim your attacks. There is an auto attack option, but I feel it's not necessary. Yet it still manages to have what makes horde killers so great. Every character can be OP, every favor you never take is one you're just missing out on being your favorite.
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Remember when Devs used to make games because they just wanted to make a good product, that respects players ability to overcome challenges, to think for themselves instead of handholding every step of the player's journey (cof cof Blizzard 2024) and that has enough content for it's price? Death Must Die is an amazing game with DEPTH, HOT CHARACTERS, CHALLENGES, AND LOTS OF CONTENT, for only... $6.99 USD. Stop wasting money on 2024 AAA cash grab AI-generated games and support hardworking, passionate indie development studios. ⛤ More at our Curator Page: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44868341/] Ataraxia Reviews ⛤
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Personal Overview One of the few games that I can say has a very big potential to be one of the best, or the best of its genera. Death Must Die is a excellent game and very well developed for its early access. I would wager the current version of the game is less buggy than some titles that are full released. The game offers a unique clash of game-play, mechanics, systems and amazing art-style that will give you something to never grow bored of, even after hundreds of hours. So why is this early accesses you may ask. Well the in the games current stage upon writing the review, there is a story-line that is yet to be completed, game-play systems that need to be expanded, and game-play mechanics which need to be balanced/updated. All of which are well on their way into development. A expansion and update to all of this is on the horizon. Entertainment Consultant Review The Developers The developers of Death Must Die have a very keen eye when it comes to bugs and game balance, and are able choose very adequate solutions. They are organised to a decent degree and their communication to the community is very strong. They listen, and can discern problems with possible solutions and suggestions with relative ease. They're very transparent with what is going on behind the scenes, and come across as very honest. They show a high level understanding in game development, and plan ahead fairly well. It is unknowing to the extent of time they put into development on a weekly basis, but it seems like this is not their only line of work. They actively communicate with their players through their community discord. The developers have stated they have not discussed MTX's at this time, but added paid DLC/Expansions seems more appropriate for their game, and will be future discussion. Through messaging with and reading what most of them have to say, they all come across as very nice, understanding, professional, and humorous individuals. Which is reflected in the game, which has a dark and serious premise, with light-hardheartedness, humour, and charm. The Look Art style is subject to debate, because everyone has their own opinion. Though common for people to find disinterest because of the pixel-style. I would like to invite you to appreciate the level of detail that has gone into everything even if the art is not of your tastes. The consistency of every single thing you see in this game to this point is unmatched, lines of boarders, style, theme, all of which flow perfectly together. This game pushes the boundaries of pixel art for the genera, and will stretch the entire colour wave on your monitor leaving you to never look at other games the same way. This doubles for making your character easy to follow even under the most intense combat the game has to offer, which is a common problem the genera faces. Game-play: Systems, Mechanics, and Uniqueness The game-play follows most of consistent things you would expect of the genera, WASD to move, mouse to aim. I did not explore the capability of controller support. You have a choice of melee or ranged characters which each boast a unique set of passives, basic attack patterns, stats, look, and personality. Abilities are all tied to their respective passive effect, cool-downs, or chance to proc, and are auto-casted if applicable. You will expect a wide variety of effects, from status inflicting, damage dealing, movement impairing, stunning, exploding, and more. The game offers quite a verity. If you have gotten this far, im sure you're bound to find out. The biggest thing that sets this game aside from others like it, is its Diablo-like looting and gearing system, and themed 'god-like-powers' lent to you by a respective god, which you use as main ways to deal damage in game. It also has lobby where you can roam around sort of like a home base. In this base you can interact with the other playable characters, organise loot and a shopkeeper that will buy and sell you items at random based on a few parameters. The looting system from enemies are dropped at random, but some unique items can be obtained through special circumstances such as a particular boss, or one of the passive shrines that appear as you traverse the map. All of the gear is split up into rarity, and have random stats that follow a weighted point system for balance reasons. To understand it further, you will have to use the games wiki as the game does not tell you this. There are some discrepancies in stat descriptions between; character stats, equipment stats, and abilities. Which were found to be a bit confusing. These items have binding system to them that makes them only usable for one particular character once equipped. Some gear may not be usable on other characters and gear does not change the cosmetic appearance of the character. The game features a scaling difficulty system that has a complexity that allows you to tailor the experience to your liking. Higher difficulty offers greater rewards, but eventually maximum difficulty becomes trivial once you have enough gear and game knowledge. Game raiting Game rating for early access titles are broken into two; Early access rating: Is the games current patch rating given the game is in Early access stage of development. Release on patch rating: Is the games current patch rating as if the game was fully released, with full-release expectations following game industry standards, from myself an Entertainment Consultant & Game Reviewer. Early access rating: 9/10, it blows away any expectations for early access games, only requiring minor tweaking Release on patch rating: 5/10, strong game-play foundation, and great art. Systems need work, story left unfinished In closing Death must die offers unprecedented amounts of fun and enjoyment well over the pricing point of the game. 'An eye candy dark and lighthearted massacre' and for those looking for a closest comparison to another game-play experience, 'Pixel art non-seasonal Diablo 3 Adventure Mode- Rift Only' All thoughts are of my own, all personal writings that include the use of 'I' can be subject to bias based on game-play experience.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 15 November 2024 21:09 |
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| SteamSpy data | 18 January 2025 10:11 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:38 |
| Steam reviews | 22 January 2025 07:46 |
Online players
433
Developer
Realm Archive
Publisher
Realm Archive
Release
14 Nov 2023
Platforms
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