Death Must Die: Meet The New Steam Hit That's Hades Meets Vampire Survivors

Death Must Die is an excellent new Rogue-like/Survivor-like title. In a market with many great games like Vampire Survivors and Hades, Death Must Die takes inspiration from all of these and more to give us an amazing, unique experience.

Death Must Die
Death Must Die has lots enemies to kill. | © Realm Archive

Death Must Die is the new talk around town in the survivor-like community. It is currently available through Steam Early Access, which is a great opportunity for players to experience newer games before they are fully finished and give valuable opinions and feedback to the developers during development.

The developers at Realm Archive took some serious inspiration from Vampire Survivors, but also games like Dark Souls and Hades. It aims to capture the successful elements of these games and mix them to something new and unique.

Death Must Die Is The Next Steam Early Access Hit

Obviously, Vampire Survivors was a huge success and one of the best games in 2022. No wonder then, that other studios have been trying to get onto that hype train for months now. One of the more successful attempts was Halls of Torment, which mixed Vampire Survivors with some old-school Diablo 2 vibes.

Death Must Die Early Access Content

Even though the game is still being developed, there's already a bunch of content in there. Here's the official description from the game's Steam page:“The game currently features 3 different characters each with their own weapon playstyle and chooseable traits, 6 Gods with 10+ Skills each to choose from during the runs, randomly generated items to grind and progress with from run to run, the first level with 7+ enemies of different behaviors, 1 final boss, map shrines and other minor features. The base content lasts for roughly 3-6 hours, depending on player skill and luck, though there is a decent amount of replayability.”

Death Must Die is doing a similar thing, while also being clearly inspired by the vibes of the beloved Dark Souls series. With this unique mix, Death Must Die manages to stand out in the very crowded subgenres of Rogue-likes and Survivor-likes.

What Is The Detah Must Die Gameplay Like

Death Must Die features a similar gameplay style with Vampire Survivors. You can choose between different heroes, who represent different RPG classes and have different loadouts, and embark on a mission to defeat Death. However, if you prove to be not worthy enough, you start over from the beginning.

During your run you fight off countless creatures, battle endless hordes and receive boons from various gods. The gameplay offers a lot of replayability, with every run being different from the run before. The variety and randomness create an addictive loop that will keep you coming back for more.

Death Must Die Hero
Death Must Die features lots of interesting characters. | © Realm Archive

A distinctive feature that you will encounter in each run of Death Must Die, is that you will meet a whole pantheon of different gods. This reminds us a lot of the hit game Hades, where a plethora of Greek gods help you on your quest.

These different gods give you various blessings and boons, introducing an interesting layer of strategy to the gameplay loop. You get to choose every little building block of your loadout to create your optimal solutions for the situations the game throws at you.

Death Must Die Blessing
Deities will give you lots of blessings to choose from. | © Realm Archive

The Future Of Death Must Die

The developers Realm Archive are working on a detailed roadmap for Death Must Die, which should be announced in early December. They expect about a year of Early Access before the official launch. The current roster only features three playable characters, but there are loads of different enemies and a lot of creative ideas coming from the studio. We expect the game to continuously get even better and more entertaining with time.

Erik Feldengut

Erik is a writer on EarlyGame's content team, and plays mostly MOBAs, MMOs, and shooters. But LoL has had a firm grip on him for ten years....