I find roguelikes to be somewhat masochistic. You play as far as you can even when you know death will put an end to every ounce of hard work you put in—all of it with the knowledge that when you hit the restart button, that everything has changed and all of the challenges are rearranged; a true Sisyphean task that bears out just enough accomplishment to keep you going. This is In Death in a nutshell, a truly challenging VR bow-shooter set in a world where you’re given nearly zero respite, as you’re attacked by some of the most gruesome (and well-realized) goblins to creep out of the Necronomicon.

In Death Review Details:

Official Site

Developer: Sólfar Studios
Available On: Steam (Vive, Rift, Windows VR), Oculus Store (Rift)
Reviewed On: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive
Release Date: October 2nd, 2018

Gameplay

In Death, game fresh out of Early Access, is a bow-shooter in its purest sense. You’ll have to get the feel for the bow’s mechanics to understand where your arrows will eventually fly; you don’t have a handy reticle, and enemy hitboxes are unforgiving, as you’ll regularly see your arrows flying between the gaps in crusaders’ legs, or millimeters above the head of a possessed demon-monk. The shooting mechanic is however rock solid, so the learning curve isn’t nearly as steep as you might think, letting even the newest player get fairly far in their run by keeping a little bit of cautious optimism and tactical room-clearing in mind as they move forward through the nightmarish world.

With a shield in hand, you can protect yourself from most arrow and melee attacks, although you can be quickly overwhelmed if you’re not careful.

Image captured by Road to VR

There’s also a crossbow that you can select at the beginning of your run, but the lack of two-handed stability makes it difficult to use for long shots. I tended to stick to the bow, although the crossbow is useful for quickly knocking arrows for a rapid fire rampage against a room full of ghoulies or sticking as many explosive arrows into a boss as humanly possible. Then again, I’ve gotten pretty quick and accurate with the bow too.

 

With only six bars of health, and only a few opportunities to heal, you’re most assuredly going to die a miserable death whatever way you slice it. You aren’t going straight to Hell empty-handed though, because upon death you’ll be awarded a number of achievements that change the gameplay somewhat, be it for the better or worse (eg: far-away headshots do more damage, but you unlock harder class of baddie). This is, along with the ability to asynchronously challenge other online players to beat your single-player run through Purgatory, the main attractions to come back to the game after you’ve put it down.

Image captured by Road to VR

Well knowing that it’s a typical roguelike, I still wish In Death had the substance of a single-player game with a campaign and a real story. Alas, this is the genre, and In Death exemplifies it to awesome effect. The level of detail put into In Death is astounding, and can really leave you feeling creeped out as you demolish a variety of monsters on your way through all of the cool and interesting side paths you can take. There’s always a terminus though with a level boss, but there’s also the promise of a demonic, giant version of the Archangel Gabriel should you get far enough (I didn’t. It’s too damn hard).

Image courtesy Solfar Studios

As for controls, you can teleport via either a hand-thrown teleportation ‘shard’ or a teleportation arrow that you load into your weapon. There is however also smooth forward locomotion which can be both head and hand relative. Rift users will also appreciate the variable snap-turn setting should you have the stock 180-degree sensor setup. And yes, there is both a righty and lefty option for weapons and shield.

I’ve played around seven hours of In Death over the course of several sessions, and I’ve yet to reach farther than an hour into the game because of its overall difficulty level. There is no difficulty slider, so you definitely need to temper your expectations when heading in as you make your way through the successively numbered Purgatories. At times, I found In Death too unforgiving. Getting to the level boss can take at very least 30 minutes of clearing out baddies leading up to the dungeon, where you then have to not only kill the boss, but a room of randomly spawning monks and ghoulies too, which is crazy hard without special arrows like poison or explosives, which you pick up eventually after a few deaths. Because there are no saves, you’re doomed to repeat yourself until you finally develop a strategy and get those pickups.

That said, I’m not a giant fan of the genre, although it’s clear In Death has nailed it pretty dead on, and there’s no faulting it for that.

Immersion

For much of the game you’re treated to a world of a perpetually shining sun that illuminates the fractured, but beautiful Gothic architecture—a tainted Escher-style mishmash of church steeples, monastic courtyards and long bridges that are suspended above the clouds. If it weren’t for all of the possessed monks, zombies, and crusaders trying to kill me, it would seem like a heavenly realm, and less like Purgatory – the Roman Catholic church’s theological supposition that a soul must first enter a hellish state of suffering before going to heaven.

Image courtesy Solfar Studios

The dramatic transitions from dark to light typically signal your impending doom, as you enter close-quarters combat and multiple baddies in a single area. The antithesis of this are the game’s ‘Pits’, which are dedicated dungeons featuring their own bosses.

The game’s positional audio is exceptionally good. While it doesn’t appear to have any type of ambient audio occlusion, each baddie has their own growl, and each thrown weapon that could so damage has a distinct noise, so even if you’re not faced directly towards the oncoming blow, you’ll hear it well in advance. This keeps you not only aware of the baddies in front of you, but gives you enough information to know when a monk has teleported behind you (nothing personal, kid).

Haptics are quite good too, as you draw your bow and feel a sort of progressive rumbling that feels like the growing tension of the bow-string.

Comfort

Teleportation is one of the most comfortable locomotion options outside of natural, room-scale locomotion. But even if you decide to use smooth forward, which simulates continuous walking, you’ll still be fairly comfortable.

While I prefer to play standing, In Death also includes a seated mode which will put your in-game height to a standing level, making it ideal for anyone with even an arm’s length of space in their play area.

REVIEW OVERVIEW
Overall
8
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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • FireAndTheVoid

    Although In Death is one of my favorite VR games, I agree that it is exceptionally difficult. It’s incredibly demoralizing to make it to the end of a level, only to fight the boss + archers + endlessly spawning zombies, the combination of which is at least 5 times more difficult than the level leading up to that point, and die in *seconds*.

    Tip: For the boss fights, time slows down when changing your arrow selection. This is helpful in order to see where all of the enemies are spawning.

    Sólfar Studios: Maybe you could enable an option for the player to get 2 or even 3 tries in the boss fight. There is a very real danger that all but the most dedicated players will stop playing because of the insane difficulty.

    • jj

      yupp a balance between real difficult games like they used to make them and everyone getting a trophy for contributing The art is finding the right middle ground which i hope they figure out soon.

      It doesn’t make it a bad game but yeah people will quit out of frustration and that reduces sales.

    • Jeff Axline

      The difficulty isn’t that great once you figure out to use powerful arrows as fast as humanly possible. First boss fight you can kill the boss before any helpers come to life. It seems the Purgatory II I usually have to teleport once. Where you position yourself is important of course.

    • Gonzalo Novoa

      You can kill him in seconds, honestly, he’s not hard at all once you get some practice, at least for the first few levels.

      Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XftPXQl9MWc

      that’s just one way, you can kill him like that with many other arrows and even without using a single special arrow, though that way is way harder, I won’t lie.

    • Raphael

      I prefer games that offer a real challenge. So many games ultimately fail because they pander to the “don’t hurt me” crowd. Challenging games are generally much more appreciated because they kill off the casual short-attention players.

      I understand you’re not asking for ultra simple game-play though.

      :)

      • FireAndTheVoid

        Yeah, I’m not asking for simple or not challenging. I’m also perfectly okay with difficult bosses. I think my frustration is, after dying in the boss fight, I have to chew through relatively easy 30 minutes of level before getting another chance to fight the boss. If I could replay the boss fight more quickly, I could increase my skill level to match the difficulty.

        • Raphael

          Sounds like it needs some difficulty balancing or as you say.. replaying boss fights more quickly,

          • FireAndTheVoid

            Well, I guess, if you want to get technical

    • Zachary Scott Dickerson

      I like the genre (Darkest Dungeon, Slay the Spire), but this game difficulty jumps around too much… kind of easy until a boss than ridiculous. I lost interest after a few runs, felt like wasting my time just to get back to the hard part again.

  • Les Vega

    Though i see where Scott is coming from, as a fan of the rougelike/lite Genre this is still my vr game of the year, just to much replay value and rock solid skill based game play you cant pass this up if your not afraid of a real challenge.

  • Gonzalo Novoa

    InDeath is by far my favorite VR game of 2018 and of the best VR games (and not VR) that I have ever tried. It looks very simple at first but as you progress and unlock new enemies and arrows it gets more complex and it’s an absolute pleasure to play. I don’t even like roguelite games and I have already played over 350 hours, that pretty much says it all.

  • Raphael

    A great game. Will be playing the new update tonight.

    • FireAndTheVoid

      If you’re into challenging gameplay, I recommend trying a dungeon portal

      • Raphael

        I would if I could find one… Do I need a portal gun?

        • FireAndTheVoid

          Second play through for me and one showed up on a wall about 5-10 minutes into the level

          • Raphael

            I really have to go back in and play it tonight!

        • Andrew McEvoy

          I found one in what looked like near the end of the level and I foolishly jumped in thinking it was an end of level portal..I was destroyed in under 30 seconds of battle..

  • nasprin

    One of the best things, that happened to VR, honestly.
    I played the new level yesterday, just fantastic in both art and gameplay.

    I didn’t see anyone talking about it, but if you are easily scared, the game will give you a hard time, especially with the ghosts. I played around 40 Hours since Beta and still get sudden scares where my pulse jumps to 200 because of them.

  • Bob Smith

    Loved this game … but I HATE the whole trendy “Rogue” thing. I really reminds me of the old NES console days, where games didn’t have enough memory to allow you to save, forcing you to play for hours at a time or just resign yourself to losing all your progress Not fun.

    “It’s so cool because when you die, you have to start all over again!” Yeah, that’s … that’s not actually all that cool. More like annoying, really. I like being able to save my progress, and removing that ability from a game is just taking an option I like to have away from me, rather than adding something to the experience. Some people like it? Cool, let THEM have the option to lose all their progress, and let me have the option to save my damn game.

    • MW

      It’s the way to make short, simple (cheap) games, and force people to spend a lot of time in them. This is just marketing strategy. That’s why most of mobile games are pile of s…
      My time (and nerves) are too precious to waste them on this kind of ‘entertainment’.

  • MW

    Na saves, no play,no money.