Have A Nice Death rattles onto Steam Early Access in March

Announced at last year’s The Game Awards, Have A Nice Death is a roguelike platformer developed by Magic Design Studios where you play as Death, CEO of the underworld. Your employees have gone berserk and thrown your vacation plans into disarray, so must wield your trusty scythe and travel into the depths of your company to hack them all back to their stations. It looks good! And it’s coming to Steam early access in March.

Have A Nice Death hits Steam Early Access on the 8th March and will set you back £11. It’s launching later on Steam Deck, so if you wanted to play it on the tube you’ll need to wait a while longer. As for what sort of death-dealing you’ll get to perform in the game’s early access period, well, it’ll be the first five departments worth.

”Currently, the game feels like how the full release should. There are several worlds, each filled with their respective bosses (Sorrows), their minions, as well as fun NPC characters”, the devs say. Early access is planned to last for “approximately one year” as they believe it will “feel complete then”. However, this doesn’t mean that the game won’t have future support.

If all goes to plan, the game will be “more than twice as large as it will be at the start of Early Access”, with a more fleshed out storyline alongside “new curses, new worlds, new enemies (bosses and mini bosses) and new weapons”. With this in mind, the devs intend to increase Have A Nice Death’s price when it emerges out of early access. No word on just how much, but they say they’ll keep us informed nearer the time.

Just from the trailer alone it looks like a roguelike Hollow Knight with less killer bugs and more angry ghosts. Aside from the lovely art style and flashy combat, it looks super polished already. And that’s a great sign, considering how it’s a game that likely features tough bosses that demand twitchy dodges. Consider me very interested, indeed.