Have a Nice Death

Have a Nice Death is yet another action roguelite, that manages to standout from the crowd due to its high quality animations and charm. It plays on a 2d plane, with a focus on dashes and melee combat, and as such the closest comparison is with Dead Cells.

The game has satisfying moment to moment combat, with impactful hits, great responsive controls and mostly fair hitboxes and telegraphed attacks. Where the cracks in the gameplay design start to show is in its roguelite elements. The exploration delivered in levels is really very simple, and because of hit stun most enemies are too easily dispatched without much thought required.
Its roguelite elements allow the player to build through the run the 3 weapons you can equip and upgrade, as well acquire multiple passive traits (you are usually given a choice of 3 or 4 to choose from). The item pool is moderate, but the end result is that builds up feeling very samey, since the focus of the game is to build as much DPS as possible.

The best moments of the game are definitly the boss fights, but these only account for a short portion of the runtime. The rest of the game is left for unengaging combat because of the simple enemy designs, poor exploration and lack of build options.

The strenghts of the game means that it will draw a lot of players due to its charm, but the shallow gameplay means that it wont retain them for too long. Its a nice vacations from your usual roguelite favourite.