Death's Door

2025-12-12
I’ve always been envious of the people you hear about who leave little treats for crows and slowly but surely form a lifelong friendship with one of these beautiful obsidian bird-geniuses. I crave bird friendship. In my quest I’ve started keeping peanuts in my jacket pocket to try and coax the fellows down at the baseball park around the corner when I go on my walks. So far, my efforts have been in vain. I think the crows around here are antisocial. They’re probably cawing “Why don’t ya bring some Dunks next time, huh pal? Say hi to ya motha for me.” Figures I’d get the real Boston birds.

That is all to say that I’m a big Crow Fan (also a Big Crow fan, I delight in a truly monstrous specimen). And the crow here is excellent. The way he idly twitches and rotates his head like a bird is pure charm. And that charm might be the game’s greatest asset. The little jokes and comedy in the writing, all in this world of death-made-bureaucratic. I especially loved the sushi chef that’s actually just a dead man being marionnetted by squid.

The problem then is that the rest of the game is merely good. A very by-the-numbers top down Zelda game with some FromSoft-isms thrown in for the combat to spice it up. Which of course means it’s not nearly as balanced as a FromSoft game so that intentionally challenging combat frequently veers into unintentionally frustrating. Unpredictable, poorly telegraphed attacks, fights with too many enemies in too small of a space. This paired with the fact that what you’re doing an hour in is what you’re doing eight hours in means the game feels equal parts play as drudgery.

But I don’t hold it against the crows. Some day I’ll make one of them my friend.

???
What an absolutely charming little game. This game gets big points for being incredibly adorable. Some people drew parallels with Studio Ghibli and I'll sign off on that. I love the little crow guy you play. His little animations of him twitching his head like a bird are GREAT. All the characters are amusing. And the writing is great. I actually laughed out loud multiple times. Especially the squid controlling the body of a dead guy and pretending they're human. Great comedy.

After that it's basically a Zelda-y game with pretty tight top down action combat. Some people say it's a Soulslike but that's dumb. It's reasonably difficult and you collect souls when people die but those're the only parallels.

The music is wonderful. That and the art and style really made it a thing I wanted to keep playing even when it became frustrating.

And frustrating it did become. It does so much right but there's a handful of fights that just feel incredibly unfair. They'll make you fight armored guys with fast reactive attacks, while being shot by guys with arrows, all while you're in an area surrounded by water that will damage you if you fall in. That one fight in the Frog's dungeon literally took me 20+ tries. I was so angry. That and the final boss and the optional weapon upgrade fights were incredibly annoying in tedious ways (random attacks you can't predict, small area to play in).

Due to that frustration and the fact that you're largely doing the same thing the whole game I'd say it's definitely a recommendation but one with somewhat strong reservations. You're likely better off playing Hollow Knight.