Death of a Wish looked like a very stylish top down, action, hack n slash right from the get go. The way the game is designed is built to be very dark, with simplicity being the main design choice. Characters and objects are nothing more that a bunch of lines aiming to look like something, white to represent neutral things like borders or save points, and red to represent bad aka this will hurt you.

The idea of Death of a Wish is quite simple, if you’re looking for a simple hack n slash you may be better to look at something like Hades. The biggest issue I have with Death of a Wish though is the fact that playing it is quite nauseating. There’s absolutely no options to reduce the amount of screen shake in this game and with the design only being a few lines on a black background, it actually made me quite dizzy more than a few times.

The combat is simply you have a heavy attack, a light attack, and a ranged attack. There’s nothing crazy happening there. You’re able to send projectiles back at enemies simply by attacking them, while You’re also able to dodge. Most enemies get stunned by being hit, so it’s pretty easy to stunlock enemies in front of you while avoiding those behind you. Enemies don’t tend to have massive amounts of health anyways so it doesn’t take much effort to avoid enemies behind you.

The story is quite enticing. It’s all very dark and a narrative on religion. The main character, Christian, is fighting back against the cult he was raised by. The story is told through very simple text that lays it on thick. If nothing else, the story is the thing that kept me coming back. While there is no voice acting, the sound effects, atmosphere, and music do a good job at building the world and tension. As I said before, it’s just a shame how hard I was finding it to actually play the game for a long period.

One of the key things I have seen when it comes to talking about Death of a Wish is people talking about difficulty comparing it to essentially being a Soulslike. This is one big thing I genuinely didn’t understand, it took about 3-4 hours of game time before my first death, while the main story only takes about 4-5 hours to finish. Maybe since games like Hades, Enter the Gungeon, and the like are kind of my go to “chill” games, I’m more than familiar with playing games like this. I’m not saying there aren’t tougher points in the game, but it’s far from one of the harder games of this type.

Overall, would I recommend Death of a Wish? Yes, unless you deal with motion sickness in any way shape or form. I didn’t feel like I did, but Death of a Wish certainly proved me wrong. It’s a fun game to play, but I had to take a break more often than I do in most games. Hopefully with future updates screen shake and motion can be adjusted and that will make it a nice simple and straight yes, absolutely pick up Death of a Wish.

Graphics: 8.0 Simplicity really is best. Honestly, Death of a Wish is very stylish for how simply designed it is. The use of colours helps to very simply represent whats good and whats bad, while its clear what an attack is and what is just part of the world.	Gameplay: 6.0 While Death of a Wish plays well, the motion is really hard to look at in a lot of sections. There are points that feel a lot better to play, but they’re a good chunk further into the story so it takes some perseverance to get through to bits that have a more solid background.
Sound: 8.0 I feel that the sound engineering is really well done. The atmosphere is nailed and while there isn’t any voice acting, that honestly feels like more of a positive in some sections because the wrong voice acting could take away from the seriousness of the actual story.	Fun Factor: 5.0 Fun is a hard one. I enjoyed playing Death of a Wish particularly after a couple hours and the game started to feel like it had a bit more to it in terms of background. When it comes to starting a game though, I usually want to play at least a couple hours off the hop and I found it really hard to when I needed to take a break for my eyes every 10-15 minutes.
Final Verdict: 6.5

Death of a Wish is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC.

Reviewed on PC.

A copy of Death of a Wish was provided by the publisher.