Roguelike Have a Nice Death starts strong — but does it have a long game?

polygon.com:

Are roguelikes today’s defining video game genre? It’s a hard argument to oppose.

Indie darling turned multiplatform powerhouse Hades all but dominated 2020’s award season; Returnal showcased the PlayStation 5’s staying power in 2021; Cult of the Lamb, Vampire Survivors,Rogue Legacy 2, and Nobody Saves the World meshed roguelike mechanics with an array of other genres last year. And just this week, Dead Cells, one of the early staples in the roguelike resurgence, received a new DLC in partnership with one of the medium’s most revered series.

Now, here is Have a Nice Death, a project from Magic Design Studios, which will be fully released on March 22 after a year in early access. Its protagonist is none other than Death himself, whittled down to a nub by burnout and ennui thanks to the grind of never-ending paperwork and office politics. I played three hours of the game this week, during which I slashed my way through the first two areas of Magic Design’s bureaucratic hell, gathering macabre new weapons and fighting dark yet cartoonish manifestations of corporate culture. Have a Nice Death got its hooks into me early with its tight combat, slick platforming, and a slew of creative enemy types. But I’m still not sold on its long-term progression loop. And in an increasingly crowded genre, a long-term progression loop can make or break a game.

As Death, your objective is to travel through the various departments of Death Incorporated, reprimanding (read: beating up) unruly employees and correcting corporate clusterfucks as you go. On each run, you begin with Death’s trusty scythe, and build a loadout from there. (The scythe, appropriately, appears to be a permanently equipped item.) Over the course of a run, you might find