Death Relives Review

Developed by Nyctophile Studios, Death Relives is a survival horror game where you play as Adrian, who tries to save his mother and run away from Xipe Totec, an ancient Aztec deity that is extremely powerful. Adrian never really gets to completely eliminate the enemies that target him throughout the entire game, meaning that there is a constant threat that almost never ends. As a result, the player needs to hide from hostile creatures that wish to eliminate them.

I got the chance to try the game out after receiving a Steam key from the developer, and I will be sharing my thoughts and opinions about the game with you. I will also discuss what was done well and what parts of the game could be improved.

An Unusual Story with A Different Theme… Along with A Simple Gameplay.

The game has a unique background story related to the Aztec civilization, and the atmosphere manages to match the theme of the game while giving the feeling of despair and helplessness. The lack of information about the story at the beginning of the game augments the sense of confusion and desperation.

The game’s core gameplay loop is pretty basic: The primary objective is completing various puzzles while avoiding Xipe Totec until the end of the game. You get to uncover the secrets of the story as you progress in the game with the help of Aztec-themed equipment that you receive in early levels. To be honest, the gameplay and puzzles are good, but the gameplay gets repetitive with time, and it would be better if there were more mechanics in the game.

It’s Mostly About Running Away, not Fighting Back.

In this survival horror title, although the game does offer you the option to get rid of Xipe Totec for a limited amount of time, the recommended approach seems to be going stealth and hiding from enemies. The story and gameplay emphasize that Xipe Totec is a lot more powerful than the player and that it is impossible to completely eliminate it with the weapons provided in the game.

If you do choose to eliminate Xipe Totec, you get to explore and complete the puzzles in the game a lot more freely, but your time without the presence of Xipe Totec is limited, as it will come back, and it will come back stronger each time. In my opinion, this gameplay mechanic basically ensures that Xipe Totec is almost always a threat to the player, and the fact that it comes back stronger each time means eliminating it becomes more and more futile each time it is done. At the end of the day, it feels like the only reliable option you have is running away and hiding.

Technical Problems…

From a technical standpoint, the game felt incomplete. In my opinion, the biggest issue is the bugs related to the sounds in the game that break the atmosphere of the game at times. The problems began from the beginning of the game, as I have found out that the footsteps sounds could not be reduced from the sound settings, and they always had very high volume, even if I lowered the volume of sound effects. As a result, I had to lower the volume of the entire game from Windows’ volume mixer.

Throughout the game, there were moments where some sounds were too loud and some were too quiet, which negatively affected the quality of storytelling. Despite playing with headphones, I could not tell where Xipe Totec was just by listening to the sounds most of the time, and the audio cues were confusing. The quality of sound effects is good, but this quality is partially overshadowed by the problems I mentioned earlier.

The performance was not stable, as there were FPS drops in some parts of the game. I encountered a game-breaking bug where Xipe Totec’s AI was broken, and the game crashed a few moments later. I hope the developers can fix the technical issues with updates soon.

Conclusion

Death Relives stands out with its Aztec-themed story that not many games feature today. Unfortunately, other than the story, elements such as gameplay seem to have undermined the overall quality of the game. If the developers can fix the technical issues that are present in the game, it can be a better experience.

Nevertheless, those who like to play survival horror games might want to give Death Relives a try.

Death Relives was reviewed using the Steam key provided by the developer.