{{ :media:games:deathtaxes_title.png?nolink&600 |}}
====== Review: Death & Taxes (2020) ======
Original post: https://misthold.dreamwidth.org/4347.html

**[[https://deathandtaxesgame.com/|Death & Taxes]] (2020)** is a 2D narrative point & click game where you play as a corporate Grim Reaper assigned to choose who lives and dies from a selection of profiles sent to you by your boss, Fate. Depending on what you choose to do, you can either save the world or condemn it to destruction.

I liked the dialogue, the art and the voice overs. I thought the whole concept was very interesting, similar to Papers, Please but with a more surreal, gothic theme. 

So how you play is: get a bundle of profiles and instructions on what to do with them, then go to Fate for a daily review, then check the shop/dressing room and then go to bed. You'll get an employee review at 7 days, 14 days, and 30 days. 30 days is when the game ends, unless you get fired before then. You can buy widgets to decorate your desk, clothing items, and important observational items which are only useful once you complete the game.

The main goal is make your way through the 30 days, trying to get whatever ending you want. Your only action is to pick which profiles live/die, and to talk to Fate afterwards. Your choices of who lives and dies causes ripple effects, but it's not super obvious which track you're on until closer to week 2. Some cause damage, some help. Meanwhile, which dialogue you choose to use with Fate determine how he feels about you, which eventually affects the ending. 

{{ :media:games:deathtaxes_gameplay.jpg?nolink&400 |}}

I played through two rounds:

Round 1: Let everyone live and refused to follow orders, I died after 3 days. 

Round 2: Followed rules (mostly), didn't support Fate's "I hate humans" campaign, got a good ending.

Round 2 took me ~2 hours to complete, and I'm happy with my ending. The world is saved! Huzzah! 

Technically, there are 30(?) possible endings. I will NOT be replaying this 28 more times.  For one, I can't skip already-seen dialogue (!) and for another, the game itself is not enthralling enough to spend ~60 hours on.  

It's small stuff that makes it just a little lacking.

Like, it's set in an huge office building, but there's only 4 rooms that you can go into. You can SEE all the other rooms, and the people in them, but you can't get to them. The only people you can interact with are: Fate, the pirate captain skeleton who runs the shop, and the cloud in your dressing room who tries to manipulate you. There's nothing really to connect to or empathize with, and it's just not enough STUFF to want to stay and do more rounds, especially since I'm not a completionist.

Also, some of the game mechanics were highly irritating. For instance, selecting the live/die boxes. Why can't I just click directly on the box? Instead, I have to click to pick up a highlighter, and THEN click the boxes. Then I have to click on the profile to close it, instead of just clicking anywhere on the desk. Another example: I get paid in physical coins, which I then have to move one by one, into a drawer, so they don't clutter my desk. Maybe these little nitpicky things are meant to evoke the banal existence of working in an office, but...I don't need to experience that in a game as well as IRL.

That said, though you aren't able to skip dialogue you CAN buy items from the pirate captain skeleton's store which give you more insight into how your choices affect the world. I started a third round, hoping that these shortcut items would be handy, but they don't explain how to USE them so I gave up.

Price: $12.99

Available for Windows, Mac, Linux. I played the Mac OS version.

For a minute I thought it had genderqueer secondary characters and then I realized that the humans' profiles are probably randomly generated and they didn't want to bother matching names with genders (or whatever), and THAT'S why everyone is "they."

Neat thing in the settings for streamers-- special interactive elements you can use in your Twitch stream/chat!