Game file / ROGUE BY ROGUEHave A Nice Death
Have a Nice Death is a 2D action roguelike where you play as an overworked Death, whose employees have run rampant, completely throwing off the balance of souls - and his vacation plans. In order to restore order, you'll have to grab your trusty scythe and show your employees who's boss.
Why this score?
Original text · Simplified Chinese
连击和动作反馈是优势，构筑早早定型、恢复资源稀缺和信息解释不足限制了长期体验。
Core gameplay
Weight 25%8.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
镰刀、法术与冲刺组成快速连击，现有评述反复肯定响应和控制感；长局后半段节奏会趋同。
Builds & strategy
Weight 25%7.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
诅咒带来收益与代价，武器和法术可组合，但评述指出常在前期锁定少数强法术，后续主要强化原路线。
Replayability
Weight 20%6.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
部门和房间会变化，但敌人与房间组合重复、固定能力贯穿长局，使新一局需要重新应对的程度有限。
Randomness & fairness
Weight 20%6.0 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
首领模式可以学习且熟练后有明显改善；高伤害、稀少治疗和遮挡角色的特效削弱风险判断。
Polish & usability
Weight 10%6.5 / 10Original text · Simplified Chinese
动画与角色反馈得到肯定，但灰色生命、诅咒解释不清，社区另有输入延迟和崩溃报告，不能仅凭美术给高分。
- Reviewer
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Rogue by Rogue · AI 资料评测- Version reviewed
Original text · Simplified Chinese
具体构建未知；以所引资料描述的版本为准
Scope and limitations
Original text · Simplified Chinese
未进行试玩；分数是依据已收录评述与社区具体反馈作出的主观资料评测。旧反馈跨版本、部分原始材料为不可重开的本地快照；本次 Steam 核查仅确认玩法与功能，未复测平衡、性能或报告的故障是否仍存在。
Review sources 02
- 01Archived materialView archived external material ↓
Original text · Simplified Chinese
收录评论与社区资料（2026-10-01 快照）
使用 作者观点摘要 的 Tier list Part 1 (2023) 的具体优缺点，以及 玩家好评、玩家批评 与 资料核查说明；不使用旧等级、外部分数或销量反推。
- 02Web sourceView original ↗
Original text · Simplified Chinese
Have A Nice Death · Steam 官方商店
2026-10-08 访问。Steam 商店核对二维动作、可升级武器法术、随机部门和有代价的诅咒系统。未据商店介绍推定性能或故障已修复。
Video reviews
Reviews and deep dives from YouTube and Bilibili, in every language. Open the original video to watch.
Other voices, for reference.
Archived third-party reviews and community material may refer to different versions. External opinions and ratings are presented separately; consult the original videos for their full context.
Community discussion
A 2D side-scrolling action roguelite from Magic Design Studios in which you play an overworked Death, CEO of Death Inc., fighting rogue employees across office-themed departments with scythes, spells and curses.
Have a Nice Death is well liked but not a genre-topper: Steam sits at Very Positive (about 86% of roughly 10.8k reviews), Metacritic critics at 81 (26 reviews, Generally Favorable) and Metacritic users at a lukewarm 7.3 from only 117 ratings. Nearly everyone praises the hand-drawn art, music, dark office humour and snappy combat. The recurring complaints are brutal boss and mob damage, scarce healing, slow and stingy unlock drops, and level and enemy repetition. It spent a year in Early Access (from March 2022), hit 1.0 on PC and Switch on 22 March 2023 with the Inevitable Time Department, and reached PlayStation and Xbox in December 2023. Critics tend to compare it to Dead Cells (and Hades/Hollow Knight) and call it a strong but derivative entry; Steam's recent reviews are still 81% positive, so it retains a steady but small audience (about 91 concurrent players in the snapshot).
What players praise
- Hand-drawn, muted gothic-corporate art direction with distinct, animated character designs, often compared to Hollow Knight
- Fast, precise, responsive movement and combat; some players say it plays well even with mouse and keyboard
- Dark-comedy office-culture setting with witty bosses and NPCs who trash-talk you based on how you played
- Soundtrack that mixes elevator-music and corporate-chill hub tracks with upbeat boss themes
- Large build variety: 70+ weapons and spells, cloaks (cooldown-based), and risk/reward curses that act as run-long power-ups
- Boss fights that reward pattern recognition and feel satisfying to beat
- Fast retry loop and a sense of real skill growth: players report first-difficulty runs becoming easy after practice
What players criticize
- Healing is scarce, and the grey-zone (recoverable damage) health system confuses players and is called unintuitive; one Metacritic user said they could rarely find healing items
- Bosses and even regular mobs deal huge damage, creating frustrating difficulty spikes
- Boss fights are visually cluttered: effects cover the player character, so some deaths feel cheap and artificial
- Levels and enemies repeat: maps are rearrangements of the same rooms and the enemy roster is small, so runs feel samey over time
- Combat depth is called shallow by some, mostly mashing attack with few real combos, and many in-run upgrades feel low-impact
- Weapon, spell and food unlocks drop rarely, so players never see most of the content; progression feels restrictive (IGN made a similar point about progression)
- Reported bugs: crashes/freezes, input delay and achievement-tracking issues raised on Steam forums (minor relative to other complaints in top reviews)
- Systems are explained poorly; reviewers say the UX is confusing and they never understood what half the things do
- Value is debated: top critical reviews say it may not justify $25 at full price and suggest waiting for a sale
Distinctive features
- Premise that satirises work culture and burnout: Death as an overworked CEO dealing with rogue employees in corporate departments
- Hollow Knight-style movement and art in a roguelite, often described as Dead Cells with more Hollow Knight-like controls
- Curse system of risk/reward, run-long power-ups sitting alongside scythes, spells and cooldown cloaks
- Bosses that comment on your damage taken, kills and gear, making fights feel personal and funny
- Floor structure based on office departments, with a story that concludes in the 1.0 Inevitable Time Department
Divided opinions
- Difficulty: some call it punishing in a satisfying way and got much better, others call bosses unbalanced and artificially hard
- Combat depth: praised as fluid with plentiful builds by some, and as basic button-mashing by others
- Whether it is a true roguelike or roguelite is debated on the Steam forums, and some players find the graphic violence jarring; one Steam thread on it got 49 comments
- Polygon objected to presenting the cruel protagonist sympathetically, while other critics loved the humour and setting
Repetition and friction
- Dozens of failed runs before reaching the first ending; one 36-hour reviewer stopped caring about continuing the grind
- Feeling of little progress because most unlocks rarely show up, so you always feel like you just started
- Same maps and platforming sections start feeling samey; the map is simple enough that you always know where to go
- Repeating the first-floor boss fight and the rest of the boss gauntlet; some players say the game is the same down to the end
- Healing scarcity turning long runs into attrition between bosses
Hoped-for improvements
- Explain the systems (curses, grey health, cloaks, unlock paths) better instead of leaving players to work them out
- Improve enemy, room and level variety so floors stop feeling like reshuffled walls
- Make healing and permanent unlocks more accessible and raise drop rates for weapons and food so more of the content gets seen
- Rebalance difficulty so normal rooms and bosses are closer in challenge, with better scaling across the easy and normal modes
- Reduce boss visual clutter so the player model stays readable
- Deeper combat with more weapon interactions and combos; fix crashes and input delay
Early Access began March 2022 (Steam store lists March 8, 2022); 1.0 launched 22 March 2023 on PC and Switch with the Inevitable Time Department (new boss, mini-boss, enemies and a story conclusion). PlayStation and Xbox versions followed 5 December 2023. Wikipedia credits Gearbox Publishing as publisher while Steam currently lists Arc Games, so the publisher changed or the sources lag. Steam is Windows-only, with no Mac or Linux build. Price $24.99. Critics were warm at launch (Metascore 81, no negative reviews, 81% positive / 19% mixed), while Metacritic users are more mixed. Current Steam sentiment is stable at Very Positive. No OpenCritic score could be retrieved: web search was out of budget and the OpenCritic page I tried was the wrong game.
Community sources
- Local file of top helpful positive and negative English Steam reviews ↗
- Local Steam data: appid 1740720, review counts, Metacritic 81, SteamSpy owners ↗
- Steam store page: review summary, tags, feature list, 1.0 update, IGN 8/10 and Twinfinite 5/5 quotes ↗
- Metascore 81 from 26 critics, user score 7.3 from 117 ratings, critic blurbs ↗
- Individual critic scores and gists (Twinfinite 100, Noisy Pixel 95, etc.) ↗
- Metacritic user themes: healing, repetition, Dead Cells/Hades comparisons ↗
- Development, release timeline and critic excerpts (IGN, GamesRadar, Shacknews, Polygon, Slant) ↗
- Steam forum: crash, input-delay and bug threads, roguelike vs roguelite debate, violence thread ↗
- Revenue estimate via Boxleiter method ↗
Archived creator commentary 1
Third-party summaries based on automatic captions may contain transcription or interpretation errors.
Tier list Part 1 (2023)
Have A Nice Death is a flashy, cute action roguelite with spells and abilities, which he has followed since Early Access. He loves its look, animation and moment-to-moment feel, and respects the developers for continuing to update it. His main complaint is that runs get repetitive, because you lock onto one or two good spells and stick with them. He places it in low A tier.
What the creator praises
- Art, animation and characters look amazing and are cute and fun
- Fast, flashy gameplay with a lot of control over the character
- Many different spells and abilities that make you feel cool
- First playthroughs feel amazing
- Developers keep updating the game and clearly care about keeping it alive
Issues raised by the creator
- Gets repetitive once you find one or two good spells and stick to them all run
- Builds are not very diverse within a run; you upgrade the same abilities rather than finding unique combos
- Runs can get pretty long, which makes the repetition wear on him
- After many runs and seeing all the spells, the novelty fades
Design observations
- Visual presentation and animation quality carry the experience and sell it on first impression
- Ability variety exists between runs but not within a run, so a run feels locked in early
