Death Kid Review
Help Death Kid beat down monsters to find a cure for the curse of immortality.
Death Kid. Credit: Crooked Games / Take IT Studio
Death Kid from Crooked Games and Take IT Studio is a roguelite arena brawler with a straightforward structure but gratifying, well-tuned combat design where button mashing is a liability. As the Death Kid, players attempt to make it through eight levels of a well and incrementally gain strength in roguelite fashion after failing.
The titular Death Kid is cursed with immortality in a world where humanity has long been gone. He learns that he can break his curse with the aid of three souls to perform a ritual at the bottom of an eight-floor well. On each of the levels, hordes of relentless monsters try to consume the souls, and he must fight them off because if he loses all three, he gets whisked back to the top of the structure. After each loss, a weird stranger with mysterious motives trains Death Kid to give him an edge for the next descent.
Death Kid. Credit: Crooked Games / Take IT Studio
You start with basic combos and the ability to temporarily transform into a far stronger form if you build up enough rage from doing well in combat. As you gain levels, you earn points that you can spend on six upgradable abilities and 15 levels of passive skills that boost stats. The pace of the metaprogression is well-tuned; I never found myself frustrated and stuck, because I’d always have just enough new power to do a little bit better on the next run. The controls to do the various abilities often rely on button combinations that don’t always feel natural. However, once I got the hang of the controls, chaining abilities together feels great, and the game rewards that flawless gameplay handsomely.
Death Kid. Credit: Crooked Games / Take IT Studio
It’s important to think strategically about how you use your moves and where to focus your attention because it’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the monsters creeping toward your precious, fragile souls in the center of the screen. You don’t lose immediately when the enemies reach a soul—the monsters stand there and drain the soul’s life force slowly. The penalty is that the souls don’t regain any life, and you have to content with that as you go deeper. If a soul is fully extinguished, it’s gone for the rest of the run, and the monsters do a good job of focusing on the remaining ones to make your life difficult.
All the sprites in the game are very small, but they’re fluidly animated, which increases the amount of detail you perceive. The size is essential for the game’s design, as it allows for more freedom of movement in combat and more interesting situations based on the arrangement of the enemies, since you can see more of the battlefield at one time. Each floor is the same—the arena is round, with plain ground, only differentiated by the style of the walls. Other environments, such as the hub and places in cutscenes, are more richly detailed.
Death Kid. Credit: Crooked Games / Take IT Studio
While the levels are all virtually identical, each floor has totally unique enemies that give a lot of depth and variety to gameplay. The mechanical differences are well thought out and are part of what makes the game so much fun.
Death Kid. Credit: Crooked Games / Take IT Studio
Death Kid is a small game, but its hyperfocus on the feel of its combat makes it a pleasure to play. It’s a very well-tuned brawler that rewards quick thinking and is worth your time if you enjoy arcade-style action games.
Death Kid is available now on Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox One / Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: PS5
