Gods, Death & Reapers boldly blends the action RPG formula with the extraction shooter style of gameplay to a very promising future in the early preview build we played.
Diablo was originally released in 1997. Its lootfest dungeon-crawling formula is one that is easy to familiarize oneself with. As a fan of dark fantasy, even more so. Exploring moist caverns filled with demons from an isometric perspective is a way of life. In today’s gaming landscape, where we virtually have hybrids of everything, a new take on the genre was bound to happen. Cooking since 2017, Escape From Tarkov pioneered the extraction shooter. With a high-risk, high-reward concept, the goal is to leave unscathed after successfully pillaging an entire map. Or die trying. Gods, Death & Reapers takes this idea wholesale to present a fresh type of aRPG.
Going all in on a Nordic grimdark setting, Gods, Death & Reapers, or GDR, feels great to play. Starting off with a high-quality cutscene, our protagonist is slain in a bloody battlefield. His soul is soon dragged to the Underworld. Reanimating inside a medieval-looking castle, this place called the Sanctuary becomes your base of operations. Once a pact with the devil is made as a newly born reaper, we are off to the races.
In the alpha build, every other system was available, except for online multiplayer. This means, and what always intrigues me the most, that I got to try the gameplay. You can never tell how weighty or ineffective an impact feels just by watching a trailer. You need to feel the responsiveness. But most of all, you have to understand how all of those little details, from the particles of the enemies viscera to the sound design, come together.
Gods, Death & Reapers has a solid skeleton. Its early state character creator allows for a glimpse of what’s to come. Even though currently there is only a male-looking option, I imagine that by the time it releases in Early Access, Wolcen Studio will add more choices. For now, and as is expected from Norse-inspired media, tattoos, body paint, and several faces and skin tones are available. Four weapons are laid out before finally heading into battle: Javelin & Shield, Seax and Axe, Warhammer, and Staff.
Each of them feels appropriately nimble or tanky. Deploying at level one on either Midgard or Helheim, the goal is to explore within a set amount of time its dynamic maps before it runs out. Triggering an extraction at the right moment will pit you against a pack of demonic enemies that need to be eliminated to leave back to Sanctuary safely. Environmental hazards and enemies’ damaging area-of-effect attacks will ensure no two runs will be the same. GDR’s quick leveling system means accessing every one of the five skills and an ultimate attack will take less than three minutes.
A fascinating mechanic that I’m sure will tell emergent narratives is the ability to respawn once when dying in a run. The game gives you the opportunity to possess either your corpse or another player’s corpse. Only a player’s imagination can wander to how this mechanic will be used. Knowing when to stop and what risks to take makes for intriguing sessions.
Improving the Sanctuary is the main goal with the resources recovered from safely returning home. Increasing your Reaper Rank after each successful extraction unlocks more structures to build. These usually mean new gameplay mechanics to access and new cosmetic items to use. A “Stable” map in the beginning where only PvE is available opens the way to “Unstable” maps where players can run wild and backstab to their heart’s content. The concept could have gone either way, but it seems like it has a very promising future as of now.
Gods, Death & Reapers will release later this year on Steam.
