Death or Treat

Review

Your name is Scary, a ghost and entrepreneur of one of the biggest candy manufacturing plants! Your biggest calendar day is the last day of October. You guessed it – it’s the day we celebrate Halloween! But when you arrive at HallowTown, there is no one to deal with or talk to. It's literally a ghost town, and you are absolutely flabbergasted! What is going on? It's all because of a new drug created by the businessman Clark Fackerberg. Are you ready to travel to FaceBoo and face Fackerberg? Be assured the journey will be long and dangerous in Death or Treat!

Death or Treat is a beautiful 2D action roguelite platformer and hack & slash game developed and self-published by Saona Studios on the Steam platform on the 12^th of May, 2023.

As you start the game, you'll be greeted with a short, fun and well-made introduction that will give you an idea of what happened in HallowTown.  Then, you'll spawn in the centre of town, which will be empty except for one store, The Joe Bite Them store! I had a good laugh there, very funny. You can purchase additional slots at his store to keep items you gathered on your last run. At Frank’s Store, it’s all about weapons, and you have twenty to unlock. Pumpkin Gates owns Necrosoft, a very clever and funny reference; there you can upgrade your three magic skills. There are two other stores where you can purchase items that you might need to upgrade skills, gain additional items slots, gain more health or purchase weapons. You will need plenty of candies and items to do so for all these stores. And when you are ready to go on a run, head up to your little friend, Mashmallow to select the weapon and skill for that run. 

The game consists of four levels combined into several small stages, and you need to reach the gate at the end each stage. All the stages are full of enemies, each with its own characteristic attack. A few of them will have two types - mele and distant attack - but most of them have one or the other.
Any items such as chests, wooden crates and barrels that have a light blue glow always have candy to collect. Every time you kill an enemy, you'll get some candy and maybe a health potion. Every now and then, you will encounter enemies with a red skull icon above them. It means they are harder to kill, but when you start unlocking new weapons and upgrading your skills, they become easy to kill. Don't forget to check the walls; if there are small sparks, you might have found a secret room. Also, at the end of each stage, you can choose which direction to follow; up, middle or in the centre. Most of the time, you have one or two options. When you reach the Hatter’s shop, it means that you will be confronting a boss in the next room. I found the levels harder than the bosses. I easily made my way to FaceBoo in my latest runs but still fell short of facing Fackerberg.

You have a normal and stronger melee attack as well as a magic spell.  At the Hatter’s shop, you will have the opportunity to choose between two random perks. The perks will be for a specific action or inventory.  For example, you might have the option of Frankenstein or a giant wolf to improve your melee attack.  Or a choice of perks for your dash and your jump. Maybe you’ll have an additional slot in your inventory.

In terms of the controls, they are pretty good as far as I am concerned. Yes, it might take a bit to get used to them, but they are just fine.

The graphics and animations are beautifully done, and the soundtrack is good too. I only encountered one crash in all my game time when I was trying to hit the bird that held candies in the first level. I just had to verify the files again, and everything has been fine since then. I used my Xbox gamepad in all my runs, and my settings were all on Ultra, using 3840X2160 on my 4k 144mhz monitor. The game has been translated into 11 languages, including French, Spanish and English.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Death or Treat Steam Store Page