“Nobody wants to die” is a debut title from Critical Hit Games, a relatively new company based in Poland which was founded around mid-2020 consists of extremely experienced AAA game developers. Keeping in mind that this group of developers produced something like “Nobody wants to die” in the span of four years is something to take note of.
Feels like It Broke Records In Terms of Visuals
The game is set in the distant 24th century with floating cars and buildings so high there is no way to see the bottom but Critical Hit added a not so original twist on it with the cars themselves looking like they are from the early 1900s, the addition of the Giant neon lights along roads and on top of buildings complete the future neo-noir visual they were aiming for.
All of these elements are beautifully mixed and show Critical Hit Games’ mastery in visual design and art direction. The game never fails to look absolutely stunning, the neon lights illuminating the rainy nights, the blurry reflections on the various cars flying by, the sound design making you really feel as if you are actually sitting on top of a neon sign hanging on a high rise. The visuals permeate through to indoor cutscenes and general environments when we are investigating or generally walking around.
It’s Gameplay Is Interesting Enough
Since we play as a detective in this distant future, we get equipped with this reconstructor tool that allows us to reconstruct the moment at which a crime happened at which point we start hunting for clues the Whens, the Whys and the Hows. Figuring out these details are the delightful highlights of the gameplay as these murders are extremely intricate in design with clues leading to branching trails.
But each clue found always adds its weight in providing the complete picture of the mystery and feels fulfilling to say the least. It harkens back the satisfying feeling of investigating from Rocksteady’s Batman games with all of Bruce’s tools being used to find out the bare truth of the crime that was committed but without any interfering HUDs to distract the player from its visuals. Another good feature of the game is each mystery is meticulously crafted, there are no simple off-the-rip mysteries that can be solved in 3 mins, each one is elaborate and deserves the player’s full attention when solving.
But at the same time the game has this overly hand-holding nature to it, similar to Mimir from Ragnarok always pointing to the solution of any puzzle faced without ample time being given to the player to figure it out themselves. This becomes increasingly frustrating and disappointing as it takes away from the satisfaction when there are so many head turning revelations in the mysteries.
A Thought Provoking Narrative
The game starts off with a 1950s animation explaining the overall setting of the game, a new miracle substance is there that in a broad sense allows for immortality. The substance allows a person to transfer his or her subconscious from their original body to another. But of course with every event concerning life there is a caveat.
The person who wants to transfer their subconscious first has to bid for a body in an auction and everyone is required to get a body. If that ordeal didn’t seem difficult enough the buyer then has to pay a subscription fee for the maintenance of the body so the ultimate exchange in this case being a debt for immortality.
Now we have seen something like this before with the series ‘Altered Carbon’ but here the game really hammers in the financial pains that everyday citizens are suffering from, which makes players slowly realize the meaning behind “Nobody wants to die”.
Now with how straightforward the prompts are, players who race to the end of a particular mystery or crime tend to miss certain endings as they will most likely miss some of the clues as they run past. Now these outcomes aren’t anything major, it only slightly affects the endings of the main cast of characters in the game.
Everybody Wants More Of This Developer
Now it has to be acknowledged that a game costing around Thirty dollars with such flawless graphical fidelity and in-depth, almost hand-crafted mysteries it becomes crystal clear that Critical Hit Games punched above their weight but it was a masterful execution. This game looks and plays like a sixty to seventy dollar game while in actuality costing almost half that price. It never fails to keep you engaged and always invokes the feeling of “wanting to delve deeper” with each passing mission. This game is more than worth its price and is certainly worth its story.
