Death or Treat Review | Bit of Both

Welcome to HallowTown, the spooky Tim Burton-inspired setting of Death or Treat. You play as Scary, a ghost who is admittedly not so. As the opening cinematic quickly illustrates, Scary opens up a candy shop called Ghost Mart in HallowTown to find that there are no customers because of something called Storyum. After seeing the run-down and abandoned state of the town, Scary sets off on an adventure to bring down FaceBoo! Or die trying. Along the way, the little ghost has to destroy Darkchat, RipTok, and DevilTube, before defeating the evil Clark Fackerberg.

If you couldn’t tell from the description, Death or Treat has an unusual focus on meta-social media commentary. From my experience, the names are little more than quirky MacGuffins that are made to make you go: *insert Leo pointing at screen meme here* None of it really applies to the overall aesthetic or tone of the game and it’s often only delivered in single story panels between levels. The game’s attempts at humor are hit or miss and also unnecessary. Luckily, the narrative as a whole takes a back seat to the gameplay.

Death or Treat is a 2D rouge-like that has you fighting through room after room of enemies. From mummies to bats, there are a lot of classic Halloween-inspired threats to take care of as you dash toward the final boss. Much like any good rouge-like, dying is a key part of the gameplay loop. After each death, you are returned to HallowTown where you can rebuild the various businesses with candies and other items you pick up on your journey. Everything from how many items you can recover after death to the damage and time of your abilities can be upgraded. Even if you’re new to the genre, nothing here is daunting or overly complex, which is great for players like me.

Don’t let the cute visuals fool you, Death or Treat is not a walk in the park. Its combat is pivotal to the experience and taking on hordes of enemies is both fun and testing. I may not be big on rogue-like games, but I never found the game to be unfair. In the short bursts that I tackled the game, different weapons (fast, heavy, or ranged), skills (like Jumpscare and Ghost Explosion), and random items found along the way helped make the runs not feel stale. Plus there’s a nice sense of progression from the upgrades that let you power through the rooms and enemies that felt challenging on the first runs. I also want to briefly touch on performance; I played the game on the Xbox Series S and the gameplay was smooth with no framerate drops to report.

Speaking of items, as you go through your runs, there’s a chance that you’ll come across a room with an item pickup. The bonuses of the item can range from a flying companion to damage boosts. You can also pick up items in prep rooms before each boss. These rooms have a vendor who will sell you mysterious potions for some candies. The catch is that you don’t know what the potions do until you drink them. You can buy none, any, or all of his stock. Then you will have the choice between two random items. You can pick one before heading into the boss room itself. You will need to defeat the boss of each world before traveling to the next one but there are portals next to the Ghost Mart that can fast-travel you to the respective section for a hefty price.

I do have a few criticisms of the game but they can all be fixed in iterative updates after release. HallowTown is a multi-tiered location, requiring you to do a bit of platforming to reach certain shops and vendors. As of now, the only way to see if you can restore a certain business is by walking up to the front door. Some easier methods to check progress would go a long way in helping keep track of what needs to be done. And once a shop is open, like Frank’s Forge for example, a quick, at a glance, indicator for what weapons can be purchased with the resources at hand would also help eliminate mindlessly scrolling through the menus. I also want to note that despite being a 2D platforming-based rouge-like, you can only control Scary with the analog stick. I wish the game offered the ability to switch between analog and d-pad movement but that is not an option. Being a smaller game, there are actually no real options past language and audio control. The analog stick wasn’t terrible but aiming sideways and aiming up while attacking triggered different attacks and I found myself unintentionally doing one or the other.

Technically, I had three distinct issues in Death or Treat. The first has to do with certain enemies not reacting to damage. I am not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but in several instances, I would attack some of the larger mobs and have them not react to my hits until they died. This is especially notable because seemingly every other enemy has a big reaction animation. The next has to do with the boss fight, which sort of bugged in animation for a second and lead to frustrating deaths. I do want to mention, however, that we did get an email prior to release, informing us that a Day 1 patch is in the works and they can possibly fix some of the issues I reported. The last issue I came across in my handful of hours with the game was an instance where the game was stuck on a loading screen. I walked into a pipe in one room and the game just didn’t progress me to the next one, forcing me to reboot.

The biggest compliment I can give Death or Treat has to do with its presentation. The beautiful handpainted environments and smooth animations give the game a great sense of style reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Each world you go to has its own unique look and color palette and it does a lot to make the game not feel repetitive. While I don’t care for the narrative emphasis on social media, I still appreciated the details like boxes with the familiar fruit-shaped logos and tombs with like counts throughout the levels. The music is also just as fitting and brings the whole game together with its lighthearted tunes. The game may look like a second cousin of Have a Nice Death, but Death or Treat does enough to stand on its own merits.

Death or Treat is a fun and challenging new title with a gorgeous presentation. It has a strong aesthetic that it wholeheartedly commits to and despite a lackluster narrative (and humor that didn’t land for me personally) it is still a game I can recommend for fans of the rogue-like genre. It’s an easy game to return to in short bursts and the changing visual palettes are nice for players wanting to commit to longer sessions. That all being said, I do not play games in the genre a whole lot, and seeing as I am absolutely terrible at them, I hope I have given enough detail and thoughts above for you to be able to come to a decision for yourself. Death or Treat is out tomorrow, May 11, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. A code was provided by the publisher for review.