1000 Deaths Review (PC): A Short, Sickening Life

Indie games have definitely planted themselves firm in the gaming industry by bringing unexpected and often innovative ideas to the fold. Finding a game that is absolute lunacy can sometimes be just what you need in a moment. 1000 Deaths tries to be exactly that but fails in many ways. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t excel at anything, causing the player to get frustrated and sick to their stomach while trying to bandage gameplay downfalls with branching narratives that make no sense and are not entertaining.

How Many Ways Can You Die?

1000 Deaths is a game focused on three of the most horrifyingly designed characters you will see in a video game. Throughout three very short campaigns that see those characters being reused, you make decisions that will lead to those character’s deaths on different timelines. For example, the first story is focused on the razor-toothed Vayu, as they ponder what their life would have been like if they decided to move to “Jollywood” with their best friend to try and become mega stars. From there, the choices branch out a couple of more times before your character meets their end.

From a story standpoint, not a lot makes sense here at all. There are some themes you can pick up on, but the dialogue in these conversations often go directly against what you were just told was going to happen. Like in the previous example, after moving to Jollywood, I took over as Vayu’s friend, Maxie. Maxie was dropped off at a comedy club and Vayu said they were going to work. I expected a quick look at Maxie’s comedic act but was immediately met with the goal to meet Vayu at a restaurant for dinner to continue the story without them actually entering the club or having any other kind of interaction. Either quite an odd oversight or just the game trying to be random and unpredictable.

Simply put, don’t try to follow the threads here, you really will only want to play for the different endings depending on your choices, and none of the endings I got were particularly entertaining in any meaningful way. I only played through three of the 12 possible endings, but I quickly got the impression that no matter what you choose, everything will lead to a bad ending. Maybe that was just my choices, but even things that appeared positive on the surface turned out leading to a melancholy choice later on, sometimes with characters completely going against what was stated before.

The TV is Jumping Around Again

While the story in 1000 Deaths relies on you making choices for characters to lead them to their doom, the gameplay side of this game is not really what you would expect. Before you can make a choice to move the story, you must play three-to-five platforming challenges that will unlock the two choices you can make at that turning point and during these levels, you play as a television set with sneakers.

The gameplay of these platforming challenges may have moments of quality but is largely a miss. On one hand, the controls, physics, and cameras led to quite a few deaths that I felt I didn’t earn, making me feel some hard feelings towards those elements. There are quite a few very interesting mechanics thrown in here that are quite fun, and some puzzles make you think, but they’re quite rare. Some levels just don’t feel great for trying to speed run through, which is what the game wants you to do.

Jumping around as this TV doesn’t really feel that great. It’s not awful, but it’s floaty and never feels quite right. Sometimes, I felt I wasn’t jumping as far as I could in other instances, making everything feel very inconsistent. The complications with the camera likely play a large part in my frustrations here, as it is very slow to turn and I found it hard to find my objective at times. There are certain sections where you are given a jet pack to dash through obstacles and that always felt bad to me. Either the dash went too far or too short or sometimes would just launch me in the completely wrong direction. I loathed having to use that thing.

The biggest thing with this game is the psychedelic nature of everything on screen made me feel quite motion sick. There are shapes constantly moving around with different colors thrown everywhere, but it all really becomes a problem once you die. When you respawn, the screen takes on a very weird distortion effect that made me feel quite icky. Not only that, while the distortion was on the screen, it messed with my depth perception, often leading to another quick death because I couldn’t tell how far away the incoming hazard was, leading to the distortion effect staying longer and creating a whole queasiness cycle. It was bad enough that even though this game took me a little over an hour to beat all three episodes, I had to take a break about halfway through just to gather myself.

Final Verdict

If you are someone who likes very “out there” concepts, 1000 Deaths might interest you with its story and platforming. The gameplay does have plenty of frustrating moments and faults that make it a lesser experience than some other games, but the level design can be quite interesting in some instances. The difficulty can be challenging, but nothing too bad. I don’t think I ever passed 15 deaths on a single platforming level, but the moments that I felt frustrated for various reasons started piling up. Outside of the freaky character designs, I really don’t have much praise to give the choice-based story as it doesn’t really follow through on its own story points. 1000 Deaths isn’t something that will stick with you long after you put it down, overall resulting in a poor game.

1000 Deaths was reviewed on PC with a code provided by Pariah Interactive.

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