Upon starting Have a Nice Death, a wave of near-nostalgia washed over me, as if I were experiencing something I had missed — despite the game having only released this March. Something in the game’s presentation clicked with something beloved, something yearned for.
Then the soundtrack started to hit me. Composed by Alexis Laugier, Yann Cleophas and Caisheng Bo, there’s an undeniable spooky vibe to it – fitting for a game set in the afterlife, filled with ghosts and skeletons and a jack-o-lantern-headed administrative assistant named Pump Quinn. It’s a soundtrack that could easily play under a suitably hip Halloween party. It’s a soundtrack that, paired with incredible and lush animation, would feel at home during an October edition of the 1990s Nickelodeon programming block SNICK.
What I was playing was an animated Halloween special.
That I started playing it the week before Halloween seems fortuitous; it’s a time of year when it’s hard not to feel a little wistful for even the most staunchly against living in the past. Skeletons are popping up all over, fake gravestones dot leaf-strewn lawns, and there’s an inborn urge to plan overelaborate and unachievable costumes.
In the game, the player takes control of the metaphysical embodiment of Death (who the game tells us prefers to identify as a man), in his classic hood-and-scythe guise. The opening animation details the iconic, grim, and looming specter as he becomes overwhelmed with the constant business of death. Exhausted, he begins to delegate and, in the process, descends the afterlife into a paperwork-festooned bureaucracy.
The game sees the player set about to take back their business from mediocrity.
Have a Nice Death isn’t explicitly a Halloween game – it’s undeniably more substantial and engaging than a once-a-year indulgence. A rogue-lite platformer, the game necessitates compulsive replay – death after death racks up the resources players need to upgrade their gear and abilities. Where a game like Dead Cells uses its glowing cells and an endless array of weapons, Have a Nice Death utilizes gold tablets to upgrade different types of scythes (Death’s main weapon) and unlock an assortment of unlockable side weapons, such as hammers, swords, bows, and Shuriken.
With its focus on platforming, Dead Cells might be Have a Nice Death’s closest neighbor in the rogue-lite realm, but its commitment to its distinctive world and characters smacks more of Hades. As in Hades, there are character-specific conversations and unlockable lore. Every creature and NPC has an entry in the Employee Handbook (the in-game encyclopedia), and the more one plays the more information becomes available. Kill X number of Fries (sad remainders that pop out of burger boxes in the Toxic Food-Processing Department level) and more information about them will become available. Interact with NPCs to advance small stories with them.
As lush and brilliant as all this sounds, it wouldn’t be enough to draw a player in if it weren’t also fun – and it very much is. Death controls tightly even as he appears to flail about. There’s a decent amount of challenge to the game, though it’s not nearly as difficult as those games listed above; those honed in the genre will be able to make rapid progress while newer players learn the joys of this style of grind-and-upgrade gameplay. There’s a sort of angsty, Invader Zim vibe to all the characters, which makes each new boss and mini-boss a delight to reveal, the NPCs endearing as you get to know them.
Catchy and lovingly crafted, Have a Nice Death is the perfect game to ride out these last remnants of 2023’s Halloween nostalgia. It also happens to be a game you won’t be able to put down after the season passes.
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