As I sat down to write this post, I was reminded of the Portlandia skit, “Put a bird on it!” Because truly you can get me to buy almost anything with a raven or crow in/on it (or any corvid, really–I’ll take that magpie print and those piñon jay dishtowels, too, thank you). I’ve loved crows since I was a kid, probably because they were the loudest and most dramatic birds in the desert where I grew up (and so was I!). The craftiest, too: I’ve always gone for Odysseus over Achilles. I love the contrast of their elegant lines and subtly gorgeous oil-slick iridescence on the one hand and their smoker’s-cough voice and goofy goose-step on the other. Basically I ❤ Crows. So you can guess what happened when my friend Jen told me there was an indie game for the Switch where you got to play a little crow who’s a grim reaper in charge of chasing down souls who have tried to escape death.
I just told you the set-up, but in terms of game play, Death’s Door is a 3D (mostly) isometric soulslike (and zeldalike). As the Little Reaper, you’re tasked with reaping 3 “Giant Souls” who’ve consumed a lot of other souls in their quest to stay alive and defeat Death. But it turns out as you hunt them down that (a) some have sympathetic reasons for wanting to stay alive–wanting not to lose loved ones first and foremost–and that (b) the Lord of Death himself is up to ignoble shenanigans. The game is strangely affecting even though you’re mostly a tiny waddling and hopping bird (yep, can’t fly for some reason) working your way through a dizzying but gorgeous maze of spooky deadlands, lush jungles, and icy peaks. When I found myself shouting “NO!” at having to boss-fight a character who had been an ally until they went mad from the injustice of the world, I realized that it had really gotten to me. The game’s mono no aware mood and the serious investment it took me to beat its bosses had drawn me me in.
And the combat is HARD. I know I said the Tunic combat was hard, but Death’s Door is a solid step up. I stopped counting the number of times I had to go in on the third Giant Soul after 30 (Betty! We hardly knew ye. Actually, I totally knew ye after spending 2 hours memorizing your moves). Through sheer torture, this game finally taught me to handle my Switch. But the journey the main character goes through, and the true ending you get if you keep pushing past the main bosses to solve the tantalizing puzzles left behind, made it all worthwhile–which was kind of the argument of the game: that at some point, enough is no more and no less than enough.
The Rookery 