Die After Sunset review

Dead on Arrival

With its stylized visuals, vivid colors, and spacious stages shown from a third-person perspective, Die After Sunset shares a passing resemblance to Fortnight. But any similarity is largely cosmetic. Barcelona-based Playstark has created a simple-player, roguelight affair rather than any kind of battle royale, so you won’t have to deal with obnoxious players or crass crossover promotions. That said, several hindrances prohibit the game from being engaging even if you revel in gunning enemies down.

The first time you boot up Die After Sunset, you’ll be directed toward a tutorial. These lessons explain the basics of character movement, but they don’t communicate the game’s objectives. So, you’ll learn to double jump, use your ranged or melee weapons, and harness different abilities that are tied to cooldown meters. But when you head out to the first of the game’s succession of five stages, you might be confused about what you should be doing.

Play Focuses on Boss Battle Preparation

It turns out you’ll need to augment your character in preparation for a boss battle that will kick off in a few minutes. Face these monstrosities in a standard state, and you’ll likely experience a disheartening ‘game over’. Powering up your character is accomplished by finding chests scattered around the stage. While the ones with the yellow aura give mediocre perks, the ones with a pink glow offer slightly better rewards, but they tend to be protected by pools of spawning foes.

Then there are Die After Sunset’s ‘events’ which task you with mini-challenges. These range from clearing out enemies from a zone, rotating mirrors to shine light on an object, or protecting a generator from damage. But beyond the title of the event, what needs to be done isn’t always obvious. You’ll learn from the obligatory replays that provide meta-game progression. But sticking with Sunset can feel like a chore.

Relentlessly resisting your progression are Murkors. Despite their cartoonish appearance, these aliens have already devastated our planet, generating a last-ditch scenario for Sunset’s trio of playables. But whether you opt for pistol-toting April, the auto-rifle-packing Rido, or Hune the botched Murkor experiment, combat is tepid at best.

No Reason to Be Afraid of the Dark

During these battles. Die After Sunset dispenses the gimmick hinted at in the title: enemies become tougher when they fight in the shadows. Undoubtedly, there’s potential here, with stages pushing you through shaded chokepoints. But beyond a color change, it’s difficult to notice much of a difference. Even when the Murkors are in direct sunlight, they absorb far too many of your projectiles, making your weaponry feel anemic. They also lack any kind of interesting attack pattern. Mostly they spawn in and scamper a bit or float through the air. When they teleport right behind as you’re emptying a 50-round magazine into one of their brethren, you’ll want to murder some Murkor ass. But trust me, revenge will never feel satiating.

Largely, that’s the same for the game’s boss battles. Before long, you’ll be given a warning to make it to the bosses’ burrow. And while there’s an e-compass and elevation marker to guide you, the trek over to their lair is never interesting. Sure, there might be a lure of finding additional chests but there’s also a hard deadline. If you’re late, the game immediately ends. I would have preferred if Playstark punished players with a forceful ass-kicking for not being punctual. I like to imagine bosses being petty like that.

Grind, if You Don’t Mind

Die After Sunset’s most fatal fault is not making the power-ups interesting enough. Yes, there are character-specific passive and active assists. And they are all stackable, so there’s potential to feel formidable. But rogue-style games work best when the game makes you think you’ve cobbled together an overpowered build. You won’t feel that here. The standard perks like grenades and freezing hardware might hover alongside you, but they’re never particularly potent. And if you’re expecting a bit of spectacle, with foes bombarded with a small army’s worth of weaponry, expect to be disappointed. They offer a bit of help, but you’ll be doing most of the work.

Although most of Die After Sunset is a rather bland experience, the use of Murkor “mukus” as currency offers a crumb of absurdity. You’ll collect and spend these to unlock stat boosts and new perks, providing one of the rare reasons for replay. But given the game’s balancing, where attacks shave a minimal amount of health from adversaries and bosses dispense huge amounts of damage, upgrades become crucial.

Conclusion

Every game has the potential for improvement. While the PC version of Die After Sunset enjoyed two years in the Steam Early Access program, the game still feels more like a beta rather than a ready-for-retail product. Although it might be possible for Playstark to turn the title around, the transformation would take a lot of work. At present, the action is shy of mediocre, far removed from the enjoyment found in rival action roguelikes such as Gunfire Reborn, RoboQuest, or Risk of Rain 2.