I can’t stop playing games about death. Of course, most games are about death in some way or another. At its core, death is a mechanism of failure, there to show you what winning and losing looks like. But recently it feels like there are many more games tackling death as a theme much more explicitly, whilst also playing with what death as a mechanic looks like too. To name but a few, some of which I’ll go into more deeply, there’s been the likes of Spiritfarer, Death’s Door, Hades, Elden Ring and countless others. Whilst being myriad in their genres, styles and tones, these games all care about death deeply. And I can’t stop playing them.
I suppose I know to some degree why I’ve been drawn to these games that explore death and all its offshoots. For the longest time I’ve been both curious and horrified by the concept of death. And it is the concept, not the actual event itself. Endings. Finality. The notion that at some point in time I will just cease to be. Existential horror. It’s something I find myself thinking about a lot, sometimes in a way that I find scary, and sometimes in a way that feels almost tranquil. Like I’m reaching for a truth that once I understand and comprehend will make my life that much more peaceful. To a large degree my feelings on death have only been made more apparent the past few years, such has the spectre of the Grim Reaper come into view for so much of society through this ongoing pandemic. Which is why I think I can’t stop reaching for art that will help me embrace it, think about it, and talk about it more. So what follows is a brief meditation on some beautiful games that have helped me embrace the one thing that we all know is inevitable.
Largely, I think games that are interested in death can be grouped into two main camps. Ones that deal with death as a theme, and ones that play with death as a mechanic. It is in the former group where the imprint of death is most evident. Whether it’s in the name, Death’s Door, or the marketing tagline, ‘a cosy management game about dying’ (Spiritfarer), games that are thematically concerned with death are centred around our relationship to all that death and dying entails. Spiritfarer is one of my favourite games of the past few years, in no small part due to its charm, nuance, and care with which it tackles such a treacherous subject. You play as Stella, the newly appointed Spiritfarer tasked with ferrying souls to the afterlife, which can’t happen until you’ve taken them upon your boat and brought them peace, and often closure, in their final moments. This can happen in multiple ways, from cooking someone’s favourite meal, to taking someone to their childhood home to make amends with the spirit of their father. For me, the game’s real beauty lies in that it shows you the mistakes the characters have made, the regrets they have, and all the things they wished they’d done different, and yet despite all that, it’s still possible to feel content at the end. One of the things I think that scares me so much about death is all the loose ends, all the fragments of my life that may be unfinished, incomplete. Spiritfarer helped to show me that’s ok, that those pieces can still add up to something great and wonderful. Whilst I could wax lyrical about this game for an age, and deep dive into the joy of its systems, the quality of its writing, and the beauty of its visuals, I’ll instead say that simply being a game that talks about death makes it valuable. Like A Mortician’s Tale, and That Dragon, Cancer that came before it, being part of the growing tapestry of conversations about death and dying is intangibly potent simply because it’s something that’s so often ignored and not talked about, particularly in our post-capitalist western society that fetishes living beyond our means (both naturally and materially). There is something incredibly important about exploring our relationship to death as society, so it’s a joy to see brilliant artists putting games, with all the uniqueness that the interactivity of the medium brings, at the forefront of those conversations.
Away from games that wholeheartedly embrace death as a theme, games that play with death as a mechanic are almost innumerable. As previously mentioned, most games feature some kind of death mechanic, but the games that stand out from the crowd for me are the ones where death is more than simply a game over screen. In Elden Ring, and the entire Soulsborne series, death is the way the game teaches you patience, humility, and ultimately delivers the sweetest of victories. In time loop games such as Returnal and Deathloop, dying is central to furthering the narrative of the game, and key to unlocking the secrets of the games’ protagonists. The recently lauded indie game Hades pulls a similar trick, but alongside finding out more about the protagonist, each death gives you the chance to learn more about the cast of supporting characters that populate and give life to the Underworld; the reward of new dialogue options, new story threads to tug at, and more knowledge to be gained. Though not built into the official games themselves, Pokemon nuzlockes are perhaps my favourite example of games playing with death to create new and meaningful experiences. To the uninitiated, a nuzlocke is a run of any Pokemon game designed to artificially increase the difficulty, by adding a permanent death feature, and limits to the number of Pokemon you can catch. At their most basic, you’re only allowed to catch the first Pokemon you encounter in each new area (which must be given a nickname to promote further attachment), and if a Pokemon faints it is considered dead and unusable again at any point during the run. Nuzlockes forge friendships with Pokemon you’d never use in a normal play though, and create a lasting set of memories that go far beyond those formed in the main games. Playing with how death as a mechanic functions in your games is clearly beneficial; given the critically lauded nature of all the games I’ve mentioned above (and the prominence of Pokemon nuzlockes as YouTube/Twitch content), players are eager for experiences that defy the industry standard game over screen that has dominated since the 1980s. More than anything, playing with the mechanics of death offers learning experiences to players that are otherwise flattened when death is treated as simply the try again moment. There is so much more complexity possible, and its something we should absolutely strive towards to continue to evolve and push innovation in games.
Of course, whilst I have delineated these two camps of games concerned with death, there are games that absolutely play with death as a mechanic whilst also delving into it thematically. One such game is Citizen Sleeper, which I blasted through recently and absolutely adored. To summarise Citizen Sleeper is difficult, but you play as a ‘Sleeper’, a copied human consciousness uploaded into an artificial body that has escaped from your corporate overlords and is now trying to make a life (or seek further escape) on a remote space station. The mechanical death in the game is intricate and slippery; it is something that you creep towards day by day, as your artificial body slowly degrades, and thus your dice, the precious resource with which you interact with the world, begin to deplete. Thematically as well, death is everywhere. Death of people. Death of systems. Death of society. What it means to be human in a body that is in many ways already dead. Citizen Sleeper was a completely novel experience, and a truly boundary pushing game for the ways it interrogates its ideas and then reflects those themes back into the mechanics and design. I think Citizen Sleeper captures best what I love about all of the games I’ve mentioned here; that in dealing with death explicitly and intrinsically in its mechanics and thematics, the possibility for growth and change seems exponentially greater. What binds together my favourite gaming experiences of the past few years is that no matter how bleak, difficult, or grim a game may appear on its surface, it is ultimately a hopeful experience that shows things can get better. That’s Spiritfarer, that’s Hades, that’s Elden Ring, and that’s Citizen Sleeper. These are the types of games I want to be playing, as these are the types of games that have made me feel more at peace in the world. That’s a very powerful thing, and something I’m really grateful to these games for. I can’t stop playing games about death, and long may it continue.