As the saying goes, you can only be certain of two things in life…
I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist.
The game begins as story panels, showing a well-dressed gentleman attempting to summon a reaper. Alas, he has no lemons! Everyone knows that citrus is an essential ingredient to summoning rituals. A trip to the market later and we have a reaper.
Welcome to the world, Spawn 79. (You didn’t think you were going to be THE grim reaper, did you?)
You officially meet Fate, your supervisor/summon-dad, who throws you into work right away. You’re not a farmer, so put that scythe down. No, this is an office job – do well and you may even make it to a middle management position!
The game lasts for 28 days with evaluations on the 7th, 14th, and 28th day. Each day is roughly the same: read the instructions in the letter provided, and mark the profiles as ‘live’ or ‘die’ as instructed. Or don’t, no-one is the boss of you!
…Apart from Fate, I suppose.
Each day, you can check your phone for updates in the living world to see the consequences of your actions, talk to Fate about the day’s performance, and shop in the most amazing store I have ever seen: Quartermaster Mortimer’s Wonder Emporium. Use your hard-earned (and audible) wages to buy desk items which can help you out and apparel, hearing wonderful stories about each of them.
If you want to give Mortimer all of your money – and honestly, why wouldn’t you want to? – you need to earn it first. This involves actually working. Like I said, you have a letter with instructions on how many people should live and die, and a pile of papers to mark. The game isn’t timed so you can really think about it without feeling pressured, which is good as choice and consequence are the central ideas. Even small choices which seem arbitrary, and a few of them do, can be the decidng factor for which of the 30 endings you get.
Yeah. They wrote 30 endings to this game. It’s built for replay, and gives you a NewGame+ option so you can keep all of your goodies.
As you might expect, there are some pretty deep conversations about the nature of death… and taxes, albeit with a cat. The game will openly ask you if you feel okay with selecting people’s fates, and if you think it wrong or right. It makes you think about the impact your choices have for the world you are in. It’s not all grim though. There are pop-culture references sprinkled throughout, all with various degrees of obviousness. It’s pretty cool when you catch them.
Though there isn’t a huge amount of voice acting compared to other games, it is done very well; each character has a fitting voice. Intonation, tone, and pace are all done very well. On top of that, the music of the game feels appropriate, although you can acquire a radio for your desk for some different options including ambient office electroswing. Because even after death, there is no escape from electroswing.
Keeping on the artistic lines, the graphics are simple but effective. Everything has this drawn comic-like look, and the muted grey palette with pops of vivid colour give this game some charm. They might not be the best hyper-realistic graphics in the world, but they aren’t trying to be. It’s stylish and complements the tone of the game.
One feature that it does have, which I quite liked, was the Twitch integration. Viewers of your stream can enter !live or !die and it will tally the votes for you. It makes this game interactive for viewers, and takes the blame off of you as the player when something goes wrong. It’s Twitch chat’s fault, your skeletal hands are clean!
Would I recommend the game? Yeah, if you like games like Papers, Please this is one to check out. It’s fun. relaxed, and a pretty decent price – well worth the money.
Ironically, there’s a lot of life in Death and Taxes.
Come on baby, don’t fear the Reaper
Hello everyone! Thank you for reading my post today. Below is a link to where you can find the game. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Death and Taxes is available on Steam now!
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