Death Coming
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : NEXT Studios
Published By : Zodiac Interactive
Category : Strategy, Puzzle
Release : Apr 24, 2019

Death Coming on the Nintendo Switch brings a morbid twist on a very innocent looking puzzle game. Pick up your scythe, it’s time to step into your new role as a Reaper : an agent of Death. You’ll work alongside Death Himself capturing souls around the world, and there are only a couple of very simple rules. You can’t disrupt the Free Will Clause, and you can’t get caught by Minions of Light. Why do you need to do this? Because you yourself have died, and this is price you’ll pay if you want to come back to life.

Abiding by the Free Will is really simple in the way that the game handles it for you. Basically, it means you can’t just go and pluck people up from where they are, that you have to manipulate the world around them and cause their deaths, thus collecting their souls. More specifically, you’ll be manipulating Death Traps, objects within the world that are infused with Reaper Power allowing you to control them. All you have to do is give these objects a slight nudge and help some poor innocent thing on their way to the afterlife.

Each level of the game presents with you a decently sized map that is fairly populated. Scattered around are various Death Traps that you’ll need to use to your advantage. The inhabitants of each level will move around performing their normal mundane tasks, waiting for you to interrupt them. There will be a set number of Traps that you can interact with, and if you’d like a hint at any that you may be missing you can bring up a collage of silhouettes, leaving you to just find it in the level.

Triggering the Death Traps is extremely simple, all you have to do is click on them twice : the first time to prepare it and see what area it will effect, and the second to trigger it. This allows you time to wait for someone to walk in the area, such as if there is an air conditioner you can send falling from a window. You don’t need to kill everyone in the level, nor do you need to find all of the Traps, but there is a minimum score to reach for deaths so you’ll definitely have your work cut out for you.

While dishing our your Free Will death certificates, there will be two things you need to be wary of. First off, each level has a specific list of high-valued targets. These are souls that must be collected if you wish to return to life. There’s nothing too extreme about eliminating these people, but some of them may be in areas where you only get one opportunity to off them, so don’t get too trigger happy using your Reaper Power.

The other thing you’ll need to worry about are the Minions of Light. Sometimes, the people you need to be kill may be getting watched by other people. What you’ll need to do is carefully lure away and kill whoever could be a witness, before killing your actual target. Otherwise, you could get spotted performing your acts of death and you’ll bring on one of the Minions. These are simply angels that will save the person who’s almost-death was witnessed, but if they spot your evil doings too much, the jig will be up.

Death Coming is a highly enjoyable game. It’s presented very simply in bit-graphic style that makes all of the isometric levels pleasant to look at, and the music floating through the background is nice while you deal out death. One of my favorite things about this game is the humor it brings with it. You have Death Himself teaching you the ways of the Reaper Power, and as you progress through he’ll reward you with compliments like “you’re unsettlingly good” and he tells you to keep your hands where he can see them.

Another high point on the game is it’s inclusion of touch controls. You’ll navigate through the levels by moving a little tiny cursor around to activate the Death Traps, but it doesn’t really move the quickest. Luckily, with the touch controls, you can just get tap happy to sign your death certificates. So don’t wait, grab your copy from the eShop today before someone uses their Reaper Power and knocks a vase onto your Switch (the horror!)