Death’s Door manages to combine the formula of top down Zelda with a unique and darkly whimsical modern fairy tale setting to create a polished indie gem. In Death’s Door you take on the role of a nameless crow who works as reaper in a literal bureaucracy of death where other corvidae serve as clock punching office workers just doing the thankless and boring tasks of collecting the souls of the dead and sending them on their journey. Your crow is more of a field agent whose job it is to collect the souls of those who refuse to die before they become corrupt and monstrous. The other crows warn you that something is wrong with the machinery of death and the world seems to be fraying, but you dutifully set forth to collect a soul, shedding your immortality in order to do so, as all reapers must when they’re out in the field. Unfortunately things go wrong with the first assignment and you soon find that in order to complete your task and regain immortality you need to collect three monstrous giant souls in order to get the power necessary to breach Death’s Door and get to the soul you were sent for in the first place.

What this means in gameplay terms is that you have to venture forth through the 3 realms surrounding the small hub world and kill the bosses who rule those areas to take their souls. The game gives you an order in which you’re supposed to approach these areas but you can go in whatever direction you want (though certain areas are gated off by powers you have to collect) and as far as I can tell you may kill the bosses in whatever order you like. Along the way you battle enemies to collect soul fragments that can be traded in at your home base (accessible through various doors and serving as a fast travel hub) and trading them in for upgrades, and you can also collect other things to aid you in your journey including new weapons, shrine crystals to upgrade your health and mana meters, and lore objects of various kinds.

Death’s Door doesn’t hide the fact that its greatest inspiration is Zelda. In addition to the game’s perspective and some of the art and animation styles referencing the Zelda series, you are given classic Zelda abilities like a bow and arrow, bomb, and hook shot. The game is about equal parts puzzle and combat, and many of the puzzles could come straight from the Zelda series. There is also a unique twist on the Zelda chest opening animation that certainly earned a chuckle from me. But the other big inspiration here is Dark Souls. It’s made obvious by the big block letters of “DEATH” that appear on the screen when you perish, complete with musical stinger, though you don't lose the souls you've collected on death. The influence is also felt in the game’s focus on rolling to avoid damage and quick hit and run tactics. Death’s Door is quite a difficult game in some places, primarily in fighting the bosses, which are huge with multiple phases. It doesn’t quite reach Dark Souls levels of difficulty but it will test your reflexes and pattern recognition and your relatively low health (4 hits expandable up to 8 if you find everything) creates tension during the longer fights. In addition you cannot sit back and plink your way to victory because the only way to recharge your magic meter (also between 4 and 8 charges depending on what you’ve collected) is to hit enemies with your melee weapons. This means maneuvering your tiny crow up against its massive enemies and slashing a few times before rolling to safety, which always feel quite dangerous. I ended up favoring the shorter range but quicker daggers for this reason, because you could quickly build up magic meter and retreat, a strategy made even more viable once you acquire the upgrade that turns your fireball spell into a damage over time effect.

Death’s Door’s gameplay and combat feel finely tuned but its in the world exploration and lore that the game truly shines. Each area is densely packed with things to find and enemy encounters, and they all feature a series of Dark Souls style openable shortcuts (often ladders that you drop down to create a way to bypass a climb) that make them even more navigable the second or third time. There’s plenty of visual variety and memorable areas packed into this game and while none of the puzzles are vast or complex some do require some tricky timing and quick thinking to get past. Venturing forth into new areas is always my favorite part of these types of games and here I was always rewarded with something new to see or some fiendish new enemy type to learn.

You also encounter various NPCs, some of whom give you quests but many of whom are there just for flavor and to flesh out the bizarre world. Death’s Door feels like a world pulled from a book of twisted fairytales, with an immortal witch who has transformed her ungrateful grandson’s head into a pot and a giant Frog King who is corrupting the forest where he lives. Everything has a whimsical spin and there’s a lot of creativity at play. I won’t spoil the identity of the guy who runs the only eatery in the land, but he’s quite amusing and his story plays out wonderfully in the post game. All of the characters you run into are so unique and off the wall that it not only gives the game absurdist charm but makes its world stand out as truly original. The story itself is nothing special and most of the narrative and world building are minor window dressing, but minor window dressing that fits in perfectly with the rest of the experience.

Death’s Door stands apart from other games in its genre because of its level of polish. The levels are so tightly constructed, the gameplay so snappy and responsive, and the aesthetics so confident and cohesive that even though it doesn’t do anything new it does enough well to be worth playing by anyone who likes top down Zelda style games. It doesn’t quite get over that hump to be a magical experience for me, and the last boss fight is too long and difficult for my tastes (though it’s manageable with some pattern memorization) but it also didn’t have any truly bad or boring parts. It’s a remarkably consistent game, and even if it didn’t hit the highest peaks imaginable for me it was great to play an indie game that didn’t make any missteps. This is a door well worth opening.