Death’s Door was a free offering for PlayStation Plus, and I went in knowing almost nothing about it. I knew it involved crows. I didn’t know it was a souls-like.
The setup: You’re a Reaper, a crow who works in a shadowy, monochrome office setting. Reapers go through doors to gather souls by killing critters them that needs killing. Big souls give big bonuses. The operation powers these doors with the souls, you see, so they continually need to gather more souls to keep open the doors that let them gather more souls.
It’s an eternal circle. Luckily, the Reapers are immortal… as long as they do not have an open door. Once opened, the crows are mortal, can die (a lot), can age… all those bad things. Good Reapers open the door, get their soul, and come right back.
Things go south when our hero crow kills a monster that contains a giant soul, only to be conked on the head and have their treasure stolen.
Now you have to recover that lost soul… or die trying. The clock is ticking.
All souls-like share certain similarities. First, souls — which can be called by other names depending on the game, but whatever they are called, they are dropped by killing monsters. You don’t gain experience in a normal way in a souls-like; you do it by spending souls. In this game, you go back to the main office and can spend them to level up in melee, ranged/magic, speed and dodging.
Health doesn’t regenerate on its own; it regenerates when you rest at a campsite of some sort. Death’s Door has flower pots in which you grow seeds that you find. There’s a limit to how many seeds you can grow, so players who are decent at dodging and rolling might want to save them. You can also restore your health by taking a door back to the office.
Magic regenerates when you hit something. That something can be a critter; it can be a box; it can be a flower. It’s the hitting that does it.
In souls-likes, dying drops all your souls where you died, and you have to retrieve them. If you die again before you get back to them, they are gone forever. Death’s Door does not do that; you never seem to lose souls.
Lastly, souls-likes are known for their giant boss battles requiring tactics and precision to take down. Death’s Door has these. The game gives you a boss battle in the first few minutes. I seem to be hitting a mini-boss or an ambush about every fifteen minutes in the game. I approach the first encounter as a learning experience, but, so far, the bosses haven’t required more than two or three tries. As is common in souls-likes, you are immune to all attacks while dodging, and the battles so far have gone: fire all four magic arrows, then run in to hit it four times to power up the magic once more, back up and fire, repeat.
The bosses aren’t going to just let you get away with this, naturally.
Ranking this with other souls-likes I’ve played, I have to say it’s been pretty simple so far. At the level of Hollow Knight, or perhaps a little easier, as I often got lost in Hollow Knight’s mazes.
Could this be a decent introduction to the genre? Maybe. I still think Elden Ring is the gold standard for entry level souls-likes. Death’s Door is a little more linear.
The humor is a nice touch that sets it apart from the overly serious tone of other souls-likes. The game randomly gives me an umbrella. Why not?
Death’s Door is available for Microsoft Windows and all major consoles.
