Life Backslash Death Life/Death Life Slash Death is an upcoming RPG slasher that will undoubtedly have your fill of greens as an office worker who finds themself awakening in a fantasy world of vegetables.
Those who work in offices often have the best imaginations due to the absolute dread and monotony of spreadsheets, meetings, and shoddy AC. Two Horn Unicorn are either empaths or have worked in these environments enough to come up with this much of a welcome alternative: fantasy.
After an interesting, cosmic horror-like animated sequence, which has the same joyful illustrations and animations that can be seen in The Company Man, Life Slash Death is much different in its approach, as it’s a top-down RPG and a fair share of adult words. We could turn a blind eye to squashed tomatoes, but a robe calling you a rapist and a fair amount of fucks, means this isn’t a family game.
Our unnamed suit wakes up in a parallel world of co-workers slaughted by bow-wielding cucumbers and the like, and a shady wizard ‘guides’ you between exploration. There aren’t any puzzles or side quests in this demo, per se, so the focus is on combat, with a fair amount of loot that gives an approving nod to Borderlands.
In Life Slash Death, you can opt for a melee or ranged approach with magic support. Our hero will start with varying levels of shirts as defence, and through drops, will obtain better armour, broadswords, and bows. In my time with the demo, I didn’t experience any merchants selling off the inventory, and after beating the boss and then being dropped back in to repeat (and then doing it even faster), it was best to continually upgrade each item you pick up.
Though this brings death, it sure beats water cooler conversations, and being killed by a killer tomato isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you. It could be the keybinding. There are basic and heavy attacks, charged attacks, and then the spells, which are both cooldown-based as well as require replenishing with mana potions. It’s a little arduous, but not the end of the world to monitor gauges.
For me, Life Slash Death was frustrating in that the basic attack is also the interact button. After killing an enemy and standing by the loot, going to attack with the default will attempt to pick up the item and prevent you from attacking, irrespective of whether you have a full inventory or not. All these items aren’t in one place and are scattered, so you have to move away from the area just to get ready to attack.
While this is annoying when melee enemies rush you or projectiles pick you off from a distance, you can also flip it and take out all enemies without engaging them with the bow, which isn’t fun. Additionally, the auto-aim decides to change where it’s going.
Despite these flaws, the addictive element in Life Death Slash of continually trying to level up by simply walking back to an area for the same enemies to reappear again is a bonus (pending you enjoy melee combat), and the loot is literally rewarding. The dialogue is a little try-hard at times and seems to push for edgy, adult humour, but doesn’t quite get it, but it’s almost there. As for the presentation? Brilliant. I hope to revisit this in the future as there’s definitely potential here.
