Death Relives Review

Death Relives is a horror game developed and published Nyctophile Studios. The game will make it’s launch on 25 July. Thanks to developers, we got an early access to the game and I will share the experience I had during playing the game.

Mythological Story and Narrative

Death Relives’ story evolves around character named Adrian and her mother. One day, when they are both traveling in car, they came across a body in the street. Adrian’s mother locks the car and investigates the street, later, a mysterious creature approach and kidnap Adrian’s mother. Adrian barely gets out the car and follows the pool of blood. But all he can find is empty forest and eventually, he reaches a big mansion. In the mansion, there are lots of puzzles and story to explore. At that point, we understand that the creature that kidnap Adrian’s mother is not just an ordinary creature. It’s an ancient deity venerated across Mesoamerican civilizations and later embraced by the Aztecs.

There is Always Enemy Behind You, Only Key is to Hide

Death Relives is a horror game mostly focused on hiding and avoiding your enemies. Lurking in the shadows is the best way to be alive, otherwise, there are lots of dangerous presence that wants to kill you. As a player, you can choose to defeat your enemies instead of hiding, but that way, you also have to sacrifice ghosts in order to keep yourself alive. In Death Relives, we equip a tool called Seed. This Seed allows to sacrifice ghosts but when you choose to kill Xipe Totec, Seed will require blood and you can only aquire blood from ghosts with sacrificing them. If Seed doesn’t have required blood, Adrian falls and be the sacrifice to the Seed. Killing Xipe Totec gives a player to enough time to solve the puzzle or reach the point where the game progress, but Xipe Totec revives fast. Sometimes, if luck doesn’t on your side, you can’t even save your game until Xipe Totec revives. That’s where the things go south in my opinion. We have a small map comparing to other horror games, but there are few things you wish to explore, even sometimes just collect collectibles which are Totems in the game. Enemies are too persistent and prevent player from exploring the map, solving puzzles. With your gun, you can paralize and kill Xipe Totec but then you will have to find blood and at the time you find blood, he will respawn and ghosts will expose the location of you and you end up killing Xipe Totec for nothing. The thing between killing Xipe Totec and avoiding is unbalanced.

Puzzles Became Frequent When Final Approaches

Death Relives has good puzzles that player will enjoy while solving. But they became frequent at the last hour of the game. Horror games are nothing without puzzles, that’s a fact but making it close to each other feels like there is nothing but to solve puzzles over and over again. Enter room, solve puzzle, enter room, solve puzzle, this gameplay feels repetitve after a while and that’s what happens in the Death Relives. I liked almost all puzzles in the game but they felt burden after a while. Not to mention you are trying to solve these puzzles while avoiding Xipe Totec. Sometimes you can’t even notice he approached you because you are too focused to figure out how to solve it.

Not Much Enemy Type to Face and Feeling Annoyed Rather Than Scared

There are three types of enemies in Death Relives. The first one is Xipe Totec which is your permanent enemy. He is always here to hunt. The second one is Ghosts, they are here to collect blood but you only have one syringe, if you kill more than one Ghost at once, blood will be wasted. The last one is Seer which appears in the last minutes of the game. They are like monkey, moves quickly and only notice player when they see, they don’t find your location with sound. This three type of enemies are not enough to give player enough fear, in fact, you feel annoyed because you want to solve the puzzle in order to progress but with one sound, Xipe Totec will come and you can end up dying so fast because there are ghosts which makes illusion and voice notification for Xipe Totec. You can try and avoid Xipe Totec with hiding in lockers but if you don’t keep your voice low, he comes quickly and kills you off guard. Which happened to me a lot.

Last Words Regarding Death Relives

Death Relives feels like a unpolished game until the end. Developers could give the horror experience better with much enemy types and actual way to avoid them rather than just hiding in lockers. Hide, try to solve the puzzle is not best way to feel scared and trying to stay alive. If Xipe Totec could injure us rather than just one shot killing, that would feel a lot scared because at the point where he approaches, you know that he will definitely kill, you instantly load the save and feel annoyed after a while. Injure mechanic would help player to actually survive and fight. The gun Adrian carries feels unneeded because of that. You can only kill Xipe Totec with that and he will revive after one second you kill him.

Death Relives could be short experience for you if you like mythological horror games. But if you like variety in the games and want to feel more scared, than Death Relives might not be the experience you seek.

Personally, I want to thank developers for giving early access to us. It was great experience to be one of few first players of the game. I wish success to developers and hope they fix these problems in their upcoming games if they will keep making horror games.

Rate: 4/10

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