Death Coming (2017)

Intro

Death Coming shows you a map with cartoon figures moving about a town, secret base, museum or whatever. You have to kill certain specific people plus an additional 50 or so random people. You kill them by clicking on 'traps'. These can be anything from a falling object to traffic lights to items that combine to kill people (water + poison + wind = poison gas).

Game Over

It's quite entertaining and the first few levels are fine. Then the cracks start to appear. In the museum level there is only one way to kill a specific scientist, and it requires timing and a substance that is limited in quantity. If you mess up you can't win the level, but there is no indication of this.

Other Flaws

Earlier on the game introduced the angels, which function as a sort of police. If you click on a trap while they can see it, you will lose one of three hearts. Lose them all and you have to start over. But it's not always clear how 'big' an item is when you click it, which leads to accidental detections.

The game also introduces a weather system later on, which can lead you to miss kills and also becomes pretty obnoxious when it starts to rotate between three patterns.

Conclusion

This is a fun little game that is certainly worth trying out, especially during the first 3-4 missions when it is still light-hearted. After that the various flaws kinda get in the way of enjoying the gruesome deaths.

Surprisingly entertaining game! It reminds me of my favorite part of Watch Dogs, which was timing the hacks just right to blow people up during the gang hideout missions, except that's this whole game, and you have to be more innovative with some of your kills.

I like the juxtaposition of the cute chibi art style with the whole mission of killing as many people as possible, not that that hasn't been done before, but I liked that it was totally tongue-in-cheek and not trying to be edgy or anything.

My favorite part was actually the last bonus stage where you have to kill certain targets without killing anyone else, because you have to individually think through and plan each death and it was more challenging. I can't say the same about the rest of the bonus stages/mini games though, which seemed out of place, unnecessary and overly simple.

I did experience what I assume were some bugs in this game that at times prevented me from fully completing a level. For example, in one stage where the weather is supposed to continually change (with different death traps being available during different weather conditions), the weather just never changed, leaving many traps unavailable. Ultimately I was able to finish the level but not able to get any of the trophies for a higher kill count.

There was also a part in the last bonus stage where I was just about to finish off the last target and one of the traps became unclickable and I had to start all over. It's possible I had clicked that trap too many times, as some of them have limits to how many times you can use them, but in this case it was really unclear that there was supposed to be a limit and was just frustrating since I was so close to finishing.

This is a pretty short game and can easily be finished in one sitting if you do the bare minimum and don't try to get a perfect kill count or anything. I think that's reasonable considering the game is less than $10 at regular price, and has decent replay value with the different trophies for number of kills and a leaderboard for scores based on time and combos and such. Each stage is unique with its own cast of characters and storyline, and I would have loved to have more of them, but I can't complain since I got this game for free.

If you are reading this before May 14 at 11 a.m. (not sure of time zone, it might be displaying for my time zone which is ET but idk), you can get this game for free on Epic Games. I think it's definitely worth a download, especially if you like puzzle games and dark, quirky humor!