I can’t think of a scenario where after seeing a Have a Nice Death image you wouldn’t feel like playing it. Needless to say, every video, whether it’s an animation of the game or pure and simple gameplay. It’s really crazy how beautiful it is.

All that glitters isn’t gold, however, and while Magic Design Studios seems to have come in handy in bringing the game to your eyes, it’s still far from showing its best face at the playable level.

But what is nicer

With excellent themes, great animations and backgrounds that could grace your desktop for months without tiring of viewing, Have a Nice Death goes a long way. Seriously, I can think of few 2D games with such a meticulous artistic style that compare to Rayman Origins.

It’s nice to be able to move, attack, or discover new weapons and powers just to see what new animated fantasies of yesterday and today come out of her sleeve to surprise you, but unfortunately that doesn’t happen all that often.

With a rogue spirit, the challenge in Have a Nice Death is to control the Grim Reaper while destroying enemies and bosses until we complete all the areas of the game. One of those experiences that any expert can complete in record time, but it’ll take you try after try until you get the hang of each enemy’s combat system and patterns.

It is precisely in the inherent repetition of this type of playing that Have a Nice Death hits with more force than the opening bars suggest, due to a marked lack of variety. A bladder that is emptied too quickly, so to speak.

A promising way ahead

The catch is surprisingly there, because it’s nice to encounter new enemies and scenarios as you progress, but the lack of variety in the powers and weapons you find – clearly a fractured randomness in terms of what you appear to find Unlock – lets you start each run with what’s up is going to be uphill too much.

It’s part of the grace of its difficulty, there’s no complaint, but when you see that you can access juicier changes and get back to the basics with the only hope that luck smiles at you, getting a good hit is inevitable clap.

As luck would have it, this is only early access on Steam in the end and therefore still a lot of room for improvement. In fact, it’s to be welcomed that the developers have already stepped forward to give a good report on the feedback received to start working on improvements.

Have a nice death

I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those games that will be a pleasure to watch grow and evolve over the months. From what Have a Nice Death is now to what it will be when it reaches the final version, it promises a change as spectacular as the cartoons it portrays.