Earlier this year I covered a little metroidvania soulslike title named Death’s Gambit, which was developed by independent team White Rabbit and published by Adult Swim Games whom I didn’t even know published video games. Looks like the guys who schedule the weekly reruns of mediocre cartoons had to find another way to make. Please don’t cancel me. All jokes aside, this was a game I didn’t even know existed until one of my closest friends brought it up to me during a lunch conversation. He knew how much I loved 2D soulslikes as they are my favorite amongst the soulslike subgenre for they they connect more closely with one of my favorite genres in all of gaming, metroidvanias. He stated that Death’s Gambit was the most underrated indie game he had ever played and that someday he hoped I would experience the magic this game had to offer. I finally stepped into Death’s Gambit this year and certainly did amaze me.
It had a lot of interesting ideas on display and compared to a majority of soulslike games it puts a heavier focus on it’s storyline and characters. However, it was a really flawed game and some of the issues it had made it easy to understand why so many media outlets back in 2018 gave this game such low review scores. From the underwhelming exploration, the unsatisfying combat, and how the story just felt like it ended sooner than it should have. I was still pretty impressed by Death’s Gambit though and that’s why I did give it a recommendation note. This was a game made by people who wanted to do their best, but didn’t understand it the first time around. That would all change with their second attempt and what was to come.
The developers had plans to update the game and expand upon the content it originally had by listening to community feedback. They have been grinding away at the game for the past three years, trying to figure out what design choices worked and didn’t work. What areas needed to be changed and what had to be added to make the world design better. Look at how the progression of Death’s Gambit worked and how to make it feel more like a traditional metroidvania instead of going down a bunch of linear paths connected to one linear big path. What had to be done to make the combat more reliable and not such a pain in the rear end. How to make certain story elements work better and extend the game from it’s original short eight hour run session. There was a lot of questioning and tweaking, but the payoff was worth it as White Rabbit approached closer to their goal. They released a trailer for the expansion a couple months ago and showed the content that would be added into Death’s Gambit. New areas, new bosses, new weapons, new story segments, and different endings depending on the choices the player made. All of this made the expansion look promising, but would it be enough to fix Death’s Gambit. Would it help this game stand up to the big contenders like Hollow Knight and Salt and Sanctuary? Those questions are what made me keep a keen eye on the updated version, Death's Gambit: Afterlife.
Death’s Gambit: Afterlife came out about two months out of nowhere and players were stepping back in to see if White Rabbit made this game any better. Expectations were high, but somehow they managed to pull it off. The developers managed to make Death’s Gambit great and redeem the disastrous launch it had back in 2018. All the content and improvements they promised were there and to a lot of people Death’s Gambit: Afterlife exceeded expectations. The reviews score which originally gave this game 6/10s began to jack up to 8/10s and even 9/10s from media who truly appreciated this game. Death’s Gambit: Afterlife proved what time and effort could do, and it might be one of the best games this year. Personally to me that is. I owned the game physically on Playstation 4 and was waiting for the Afterlife expansion to release. It came out on PC and Nintendo Switch first, and soon would be ported one month afterwards. I was excited to step back into Siradon once more and luckily I was not disappointed. Death’s Gambit: Afterlife is truly amazing and I now have an easier time giving this game a high level of recommendation. It has now become one of my top soulslikes and it may be one of my new favorite metroidvanias. Man, it has been a really good year for the metroidvania genre hasn’t it? Today I want to talk about why I absolutely loved Death’s Gambit Afterlife and why it deserves your attention. Death awaits thee at the end. He has a job for you and that job must be carried out. Onwards!
Story
The story of Death’s Gambit follows Sorun, once a young innocent little boy who lived in a small countryside house with his mother Everly. Sorun’s father died of a tragic fate years ago, but since then Everly has taken care of Sorun and given him all the love she has to offer. She promised to never leave Sorun alone, but one day Everly is chosen to go out on a dangerous expedition assigned by the kingdom they live in named Vados. The mission is to cut down any outside threat and locate a relic they originally believe was nonexistent. Sorun is afraid that his mother won’t come back, but Everly promises Sorun she will. Days go by, weeks even, and eventually those weeks are collected into years. Everly never came back from her expedition.
Sorun is now a young man capable of taking care of himself. He has joined a recent expedition, similar to the one his mother joined when he was younger, and was sent out of the Vados to investigate an unknown threat. He rides alongside a group of soldiers towards a kingdom known as Siradon. A once populated place, but has now been overrun with monsters. Including the corpses of dead creatures which have come back to life. The journey was going smoothly at first, until the riders were cut down easily by a mystical being who could warp out of reality within the blink of an eye. Sorun crawls along the ground hoping to get away. The reason why he joined the expedition was not to fulfill his mission, but to hopefully find his missing mother who he believed was in Siradon. The being who chopped up his companion was named Endless and she approached Sorun with her saber. Stab! Sorun never found his mother.
Sorun soon begins to hear a mysterious voice speak to him. The voice tells Sorun that he isn’t dead yet, and some force is keeping him alive. He finds himself in a dark realm and begins to recollect what had happened. He wakes to find his comrades bodies being tossed into a burning fire, and that a lizard man bearing scaly armor had pulled him from the battlefield. His name is Vrael and he had journeyed to Siradon in search of the relic the expedition was sent to find. He’s shocked to find Sorun alive, in fact he found Sorun originally dead in the battlefield. He tells Sorun that he won’t make it far in Siradon as everyone who inhabits the land has been driven mad. Sorun walks a little further and out of nowhere a tall skull masked being wearing a cloak made of crow feathers appears. He wields a giant glowing scythe and speaks with an otherworldly voice. It was Death himself and surprisingly he hadn’t come to reap Sorun’s soul. Death begins to explain to Sorun why he had suddenly come back to life. Siradon is home to a powerful relic known as the Source of Immortality, capable of bringing the dead back to life and extending their life duration. However, the relic makes it so that it is impossible to die and slowly it begins to corrupt the minds of those who are made immortal. A tyrant named Endless has seized the Source of Immortality and locked herself up within a heavily guarded castle. The gateway to the Afterlife had been cut off due to the Source of Immortality creating a barrier between Siradon and it. The flow of life has been disrupted and Death needs someone to go and bring that flow back into motion. He chooses Sorun for the job as he had brought him back to life and finds him the most capable warrior of doing so. He pulls out a contract and Sorun signs his signature along it. Death knew the two of them would be good friends, and Sorun was still trying to figure out what the f*ck was going on.
Sorun ventures further into Siradon and soon begins to understand how his undead powers work. Whenever he dies Death takes his souls and revives him back at an Idol of Death, and the wounds he had are fully healed. He discovers that Everly had employed a couple of skilled warriors to stand in Sorun’s way and prevent him from going any further. Some warriors don’t even work for Sorun, but stand in his way as they don’t want him to cause any more trouble than they already are. When Sorun does reach the castle the Source of Immortality is being kept in he finds the main drawbridge has been raised, so he climbs into the ewers hoping to find another entrance in. Sadly a seal has been placed and the only way to open the seal is to retrieve three sigils being held by several strong immortal beings scattered across Siradon. Sorun realizes his adventure has just gotten more complicated, but he toughens up and pushes forward. He’ll unlock otherworldly powers, slay ferocious beasts, grow stronger in time, and hopefully reach the Source of Immortality. He’ll make unlikely friends and find his mother Everly. He will discover what happened to her, and if she is still alive he will bring her home safely.
Gameplay
Death’s Gambit: Afterlife has not only managed to improve the several problems the original version had, but perfectly take the Dark Souls formula and transition it into 2D. Now I know a lot of you would say a bunch of other 2D soulslike from the past have managed to do this already, but I want you to hear me out for a bit. It is both a compelling action RPG , and a twisting metroidvania styled world to explore.
The original version of this game had a lackluster linear world design structure. Rather than have the interconnectedness of Hollow Knight or Blasphemous it instead basically had a tree branch. It splits into multiple paths, but none of them really loop back into any earlier section and they all connect to one main piece. Area/level design was linear as well as there weren’t many times when shortcuts were opened up. Plus levels were so short and easy to navigate that there weren’t really that many reasons to go through these shortcuts, when running past every enemy would work equally as well. There were a plentiful handful of checkpoints and none of them were too far off from where you were. It wasn’t bad world and level design, but more could have been done. Yeah, more has been done since then. Levels have been stretched out even longer and certain sections are made more challenging than before. Opening up shortcuts and discovering checkpoints feels more satisfying now, as progressing through levels was more dangerous than before. The way you access areas now have now been changed, so now you need new abilites to access them. Upgrades, metroidvania style upgrades.
A new addition to Death’s Gambit; Afterlife are upgrades which are obtained by beating certain bosses. They are needed to traverse the environments and get through sections you wouldn’t be able to go through with your baci capabilities. These upgrades and inaccessible areas give you the idea that you aren’t ready yet and that you should come back when the time is ready. That’s good. That means players don’t walk into a high leveled area and immediately get their asses kicked. These upgrades include a midair dash which is good for traversing long distances and quickly outmaneuvering attacks. There’s a double jump which allows you to reach higher areas and eventually touch certain orbs which allow you to do an infinite amount of double jumps for a short period of time. There’s a plunge attack which allows you to break certain surfaces and damage enemies below. There's more, but those are the ones I wanted to point out.
Now let’s move onto combat and how character builds have been improved. In a soulslike you have a health bar and a stamina bar. If your health goes down all the way then you are booted back to the last checkpoint, which in this case are Idols of Death, and every enemy you just killed respawns. You can recover your health using Phoenix Plumes which replenish when you rest at idols, but there is a limited amount of times you can use them so item management is important. Plus, using a healing item can leave you exposed so you have to learn when to heal during a chaotic fight. When you kill enemies you earn Shards, which is this game's equivalent to Souls or Blood Echoes, and they are your experience points. They can be spent at idols to upgrade your stats and improve your capabilities. Your maximum health bar, maximum stamina bar, stamina regeneration, healing efficiency, and the scaling of specific weapons. Weapons scale with one particular stat and focusing on them can form special playstyles, Greatswords and axes scale mainly with strength, and leveling strength up can help form an aggressive playstyle that focuses around powerful physical damage. Bows and scythes scale with finesse, and can help make play styles that require delicacy and care. Stuff like that. Normally when you die in a soulslike game you drop your experience points and you have to backtrack to where you died to recover them. In Death’s Gambit you keep your experience points and instead drop one of your Phoenix Plumes, decreasing the amount of times you can heal. This is a great idea, because healing is an important aspect in a soulslike as it determines the flow of combat. It also feels less punishing that you aren’t losing the materials needed to level up. The urgency to recover a healing plume is still there, but at the same time it isn’t as stressful. Another cool mechanic is that you can exchange plumes at idols to receive a damage boost, so if you are really good at combat and don’t find yourself healing much then you can sacrifice some of your maximum plumes for more damage against enemies.
Whenever you attack, dodge, block, or use one of your abilities you use up a little stamina. Once the stamina bar is empty you must wait for it to replenish. In the original game this bar empties so when attacking that you could only attack three to four times in a combo. Leveling up endurance, which is the stat that increases maximum stamina, was useless as the stamina you earned wasn’t really much and it was much better to just invest in another stat category. They fixed it by not only decreasing the amount of stamina expended during an attack, but also making it so that leveling up endurance actually did something. Anyways, stamina management is important and certain weapons will require less or more stamina. There are a variety of weapons to choose from and they each play differently. There are swords, greatswords, hammers, axes, spears, halberds, bows, spellbooks, scythes, and a couple of variations for these weapons. What makes combat in Death’s Gambit interesting are weapon abilities and how they perform. There is a third meter dedicated to these weapon abilities, and the more points it builds up the more powerful abilities you can perform. These abilities have cooldown timers, but the game encourages you to use them as much as possible by making it so abilities don’t use any stamina. Some abilities will only work with specific weapon types and have stat requirements, so keep that in mind. As an example, I mainly used an axe throughout my playthrough and the abilities you unlock for the axe do tremendous amounts of damage for strength builds. A heavy chop attack which deals a lot of physical damage. A throwing attack which causes the axe to fly forward and then back like a boomerang. A quick samurai slice which leaves fire behind. These abilities are really cool and helped me adapt to an aggressive playstyle.
There are bosses littered throughout the game and they are the walls built between you and your goal. They require a handful of attempts and time to beat, but once you get it down you feel like a champ. Another mechanic I found great about bosses in Death’s Gambit is the progression through a fight. If you die during the boss fight then it will show you how far you made. The health you slithered away from the boss will give you shards. It gives the player a sharper edge in the fight by providing them the experience points for a few level ups. Plus it helps remind them with a little more effort they can bring this bad boy down. Once you beat a boss you earn a skill point and this is much different from leveling up. Skill points can be put towards skill trees containing special perks and bonuses. New this time around are skill trees specially for the different starting classes. I choose a Blood Knight as my starting class, so the skill tree focuses on an aggressive playstyle. One of these perks was my stamina immediately fully recovering whenever a weapon ability was performed, so basically I could hack away and then perform a weapon ability only to then hack away some more. There’s also an advanced skill tree which improves the weapon abilities for that starting class’ specific weapon type. Bosses are the only way to obtain skill points and you can obtain more by fighting their heroic versions of bosses. The heroic boss fights completely change the attack patterns of the boss, and even give them new abilities to make the fights more confusing/chaotic. They deal more damage than before, have more defense, more health, and are an ultimate test against your strength and skills. They are optional, but there is a point in Afterlife where you have to fight some of them. We’ll get to that later. Defeating the heroic boss fight will give you another skill point, and a couple of high leveled gear and goodies only obtainable through the heroic fight.
That's all the basics I need to tell you about Death’s Gambit: Afterlife. It’s an extremely fun game and the quality of life improvements make it more approachable than before. I could mention that there are two forms of parrying now. One of them is a basic parry, and the other is blocking at the right time and following up with a powerful flurry. Besides that there really isn’t much else. Hopefully you can locate the Source of Immortality, defeat Endless, and escape this undying curse. This dream. This nightmare which grasps you and refuses to let go. Good luck.
Thought
Death’s Gambit: Afterlife has to be one of the most incredible experiences I had this year. There’s a lot to love about this game and even if you are not a fan of Dark Souls or the soulslike genre there is something to appreciate. It’s the perfect example of how to take the Souls formula and transition it into another plane. I would even go as far to say that Death’s Gambit is better than Salt and Sanctuary, which if you don’t know is the main example a lot of soulslike players use as the best 2D soulslike. I want to do a quick recollection of what Death’s Gambit: Afterlife gets right, and what problems from the original version it fixes or attempts to fix.
The combat still doesn’t have the weight it needs, but it does feel more satisfying this time around. Mastering the flow of combat is fun and personally I like the animations for every attack and weapon ability you perform. The sounds help too as they can help make every hit have an impact even though it cuts clean through an enemy.
The one aspect I do continue to love about Death’s Gambit is the story and how compared to a majority of soulslikes is more story and character focused. Sorun’s drive to conquer what seems like insurmountable odds so that he can be reunited with his mother. The characters he meets along the way help give him hope through the dying world, but as each of his companions are picked off he feels saddened. They all died of unpredictable means and one day he too will die. He wants to be remembered. He wants his mother’s legacy to live on through the ages. He doesn’t want to be forgotten. He doesn’t want to die. Sometimes Sorun will have banters with Death and ask what he is working towards. What’s the point of trying when no one will recognize the sacrifices you take? Death then tries to remind Sorun that the point is not to be remembered. The point is to live our lives thoroughly and remind ourselves we should be happy for who we are. Death’s Gambit handles the theme of death and acceptance well, and the final fight reinforces this theme.
Now the original game had an interesting world to explore, but it never really gave all that much explanation of how you end up in certain locations or bosses. Like why is there an area ripped right out of a science fiction movie in a fantasy setting? How did we end up in an eldritch crypt and face off against lovecraft inspired horrors? I’m not going to spoil too much, but I do want to point out halfway through the game you face a being with otherworldly powers. He felt really important to the story, but they never really explored upon him after that. He just felt like he was there. The ending was satisfying, but it felt very abrupt. Luckily, Afterlife extends the story to offer a more satisfying conclusion and address these issues. That one villain who I won’t spoil appears in the end and they explore him as a threat more. Plus the true ending to Death’s Gambit: Afterlife might be the best conclusion to happen this year.
What else can I compliment on? Oh yeah, in the original version the camera was zoomed so close in on the player that it was hard to see what dangers were around or approaching you. This especially got frustrating for certain bosses with huge arenas as it was hard to keep track of them. Here they zoomed the camera out more so that it is possible to see what lies ahead or what threats are approaching. I still love the pixel art and how vibrant everything is, but the original version had backgrounds that didn’t compose much and some areas could have used more detail. They added more detailing in Afterlife and put in backgrounds that are absolutely gorgeous at times. The music is better than I remember and for some reason it reminded me of the gallantry of Hollow Knight. Those peaceful tracks when you're wandering through the environments and absorbing how lonely the world is. Then they kick in those bombastic tracks when you’re fighting bosses, and it’s this symphony of death that keeps you on your toes. Then there are those story moments where they remind you of your goal.
Death’s Gambit: Afterlife is amazing, but I do have a couple of complaints with the game. One of these is a major complaint and deals with how you access the new content that comes along with the expansion. Remember those heroic bosses from earlier? Turns out you have to beat five of them to access the endgame content and the way they make some of these difficult is crazy. The original fights are tough and fair, but the heroic fights are tough and scream “f*ck you”. Some of these heroic fights took more than half an hour to beat. One of the newly added boss fights, the Grey Wanderer, has this one attack that causes the framerate to absolutely tank and the fight is made harder not because this attack is hard to avoid but the game is going down to ten frames per second. Another complaint is that- you know what I think that’s all I can think of at the moment. I don’t have that many complaints with Afterlife. It goes to show how many problems they addressed when making the expansion. So congrats!
Death’s Gambit: Afterlife is the best example of how to do an expansion and it has transformed this game into an utter masterpiece. Those who already own Death’s Gambit will be able to download the Afterlife expansion for free, and even if you don’t own Death’s Gambit already it goes for a pretty affordable price. The game lasts roughly around ten to fifteen hours depending on the player’s skill level, there is a ton of content on display, and there is a ton of replay value due to how the game now has three different endings. I highly recommend checking this game out, and if you’re someone who wasn’t pleased with the original version then maybe hop back in and give it a whirl again. White Rabbit is a dedicated studio who have put love and attention towards their game. They learned from failure and made tremendous improvements. In the end I am going to give Death’s Gambit: Afterlife a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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