Death or Treat:  Cute & Frustrating

Death or Treat is a 2D roguelike action hack n slash indie game that was released on May 11^th, 2023.

I was looking forward to Death or Treat because just like everyone else in the world… Halloween themes are my favorite, and here they are saying Halloween is coming early this year!

Yes, I was persuaded very easily.

At the time I thought that Death or Treat had to be connected to Have A Nice Death in some sort of way. How could it not? The art style and game theme were extremely similar to one another.

I wasn’t the only person who thought the same thing as some have mentioned they originally believed that Death or Treat was a new DLC for the game Have A Nice Death.

Well, guess what?

Death or Treat is a completely separate game that has no affiliation with the game Have A Nice Death, Hollow Knight, or any other similar titles. Perp Games acknowledges that their game can be confused with others because they are following in their footsteps.

Now that we have addressed the confusion surrounding this game title, let’s start with some general information.

Death or Treat — The Basic Information

Official Game Title: Death or Treat
Game Price: $24.99
Release Date: Thursday, May 11, 2023
Number of Players: Single Player
Genre: Action, Adventure, Indie
Developer: Saona Studios
Publisher: Saona Studios, Hawthorn Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+
Platforms: PlayStation, Nintendo, XBox, and Steam
Official Website: deathortreat.com

Official Game Description: The Halloween spirit is missing! Play as Scary and help him save HallowTown. “Death or Treat” is a 2D action-rogue-lite and hack & slash, with handpainted environments and traditional animation. Explore all the worlds and defeat hordes of enemies using different weapons and skills.

Welcome to the Humble Village of HallowTown

You play as a simple ghost named Scary and your job is to not only save the humble village of HallowTown, but you must also save Halloween!

Scary will venture into different realms named Darkchat, RipTok, DevilTube, and finally Faceboo to conquer the grunts and greedy bosses that cause a threat to his home village.

Don’t fret, although you will be fighting alone you do have some friends that offer up tips before you go out. The coolest thing I got to do in this game was purchase a Starbucks-esque drink which is how you replenish your health in the game.

To someone that loves Halloween and loves playing video games, Death or Treat should be an easy win!

Death or Treat: Halloween Is Coming Early This Year

Is Halloween coming early a good thing? I love Halloween and share the enthusiasm around this holiday. However, I’m fine with waiting for the seasons to change because I know that soon the atmosphere will be filled with fright and fear.

Plus, when things are rushed it rarely ends up going well. Yes, there are times when whipping something up works out delightfully, but I’m here to tell you that for Death or Treat that simply was not the case.

Choice: Death or Treat? It’s Death For Me.

Death or Treat is much like the cake you take out of the oven a bit too early. Still tasty, but definitely not ready.

The statement “Halloween came early this year” has been this game’s cute tagline. It is cute, but I could have waited for October 31st just like I do every year if it meant that I would get the delightful treat of a fully developed game.

I feel that for a game that was merely days away from its release date had a serious problem. The problem was so serious that eventually, I had to stop playing the game altogether.

Control & Gameplay Mechanics

This may be a personal problem, but when I wasn’t in attack mode, I had difficulties with seemingly simple tasks which left me perplexed and feeling like an idiot. I had someone else take over the game to see if it was just me and they were having the exact same issues. 

Mechanical Issues — Keep in mind we were playing on a PlayStation 5. 

• When your character dies, you are taken to a screen where you can save the ingredients that you have collected so far, yet when I tried to select the ingredient and/or select a slot to save them the game wouldn’t allow me to do so. My solution: I was able to hit the PlayStation button on my controller and then go back to select the ingredient and slots, but even that trick only worked partially.
• Another issue: When my character was given a second life to continue slaying more spooky little bad guys, I was stuck. I kept running back and forth on the main level and no matter what I did I couldn’t progress to the next scene. I even started a brand new game and the same thing would happen. 

After several attempts of trying to complete Death or Treat I had to just end the game.

Purchasing the game on Steam was an idea that crossed my mind, but when I saw the $24.99 price tag I couldn’t do it.

What if I purchase the game and the same damn thing happens?

PLUS — $24.99 is a lot for a single-player half-baked indie game. If I were to compare it to other indie games that I’ve previously played, I’ve gotten way more out of even free indie titles compared to Death or Treat.

There’s also no dialogue in the game which usually results in a more feasible price tag for this type of game. I believe that the ideal price point for Death or Treat would be $14.99 and then $4.99 for any upcoming DLC.

Well, fortunately for me I knew someone else that bought the game and they let me play. My friend’s copy had the same issues, but it did allow me to get further along, but not all the way.

I did mention these issues to the team, and they did let me know that a patch was being rolled out to fix at least one of the issues I mentioned. Hopefully, they get it fixed because there are others that experienced the same. — You can check out my Death or Treat gameplay and you will see what I mean and it looks like Voodoo Whiskey Gaming had issues with continuing the game as well.

Graphics & Sound

I love handpainted 2D indie games. They’re my favorite. Death or Treat’s artwork is gorgeous. If you pause for just a moment you will see the amount of minor details and tiny embellishments throughout that bring this spooky title to life. It’s certainly eye-catching and it is obvious the artists took time to craft a perfectly balanced world of charming and eerie.

However, the problem that I have with Death or Treat isn’t the artwork, it is the Game Design. 

The text and/or fonts can be challenging to read if you are not playing on a monitor. (Remember, I was playing this on my PlayStation 5.)

Sitting on my sofa and trying to make out barely legible text/fonts across my living room wasn’t possible. Okay, fine no old-school game-playing for me.

Take my advice when I say you want to sit close in front of a monitor.

I was completely shocked to see how many candies were needed to do anything once I was able to read what was on the screen.

After hooking up my PlayStation 5 to a monitor it was better, but there are a lot of small description texts in various colors that aren’t the best against a dark screen.

I was able to make out what the text was saying, but if someone said it was hard for them to read I wouldn’t be surprised. 

The game’s sound effects are fine, but the music isn’t a smooth loop because you can hear the harsh cut before it starts over. Overall, the sound is good enough to keep you in the gaming experience.

Story & Characters

Yeah, you’re definitely not going to see thousands of YouTube videos deep-diving into the lore of Death or Treat. 

Our characters are caricatures of pop-culture icons which I found to be endearing.

We have Joe Bite Them, who is a vampire and reminds me of my favorite cereal mascot Count Chocula. Jobs, obviously Steve Jobs, even sports the infamous black turtle neck that we all know the late Steve Jobs for constantly wearing.

Lastly, there’s Marshmallow… He’s just a plain Marshmallow.

Want Something That Is Story-Rich? Story-Driven? Look elsewhere.

I feel that Death or Treat’s story was almost an afterthought.

Sure, there’s some thought involved since they have coined silly spinoff names of popular social media platforms that we use today and used them to name their realms. We also know where they stand when it comes to social issues due to the story’s message and how items are named.

You have Darkchat (Snapchat), RipTok (TikTok), DevilTube (YouTube), and Faceboo (Facebook), creative, eh? I wish some of their creativity was infused into the story to give us more depth.

It’s too simple. There’s nothing that pulls you in enough to make you emotionally invested in Scary’s world, except for the fact that you paid for this game and you could get a few trophies out of this. Yeah, that’s about it.

To sum it up if you are looking for a game with a good story, Death or Treat is not the game for you.

Would I Replay or Recommend Death or Treat?

Just a reminder that replay value is totally dependent on what type of gamer you are, but here are my thoughts…

Considering that I could barely play the game I would say no. Even after playing the bit that I did, I don’t see what would make you come back unless you wanted to go back for more trophies or to max out items.

Maybe if you just wanted to go through it again to look at the artwork then yes I could see that, but you could easily find something else similar for art inspiration.

No, I would not recommend this game to anyone. It’s not ready.

Final Thoughts & Score

Ouch.

A game I was truly looking forward to failed me. I’m disappointed, but despite everything, it can be saved.

It would serve Death or Treat well if they decided to flesh out the story, but if they decide to keep the story the same, drop the price to $14.99 and focus on the mechanics. Once that’s done roll out a huge update.

Now if they were to flesh out the whole title including the story, add minor sound dialogue for characters, fix the music, and get the mechanics working for $24.99 I wouldn’t be mad.

Yet at this moment, this game shouldn’t even be publicly available.

Those are my honest thoughts on Death or Treat, but I want to know your thoughts. What was your experience? I would love to hear them!

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