This series has a long list of “death” and “dead” games in a row. Some of these games make death friendly , while others make it a tedious slog . It seems fitting and almost inevitable, then, that there would come a game that looks at death and relegates it to absolute meaninglessness, while also yearning for it. And that it would remind me very, very strongly of We Happy Few .

Okay, but you see it, right?

Deathloop is a first-person shooter. Set on the island of Blackreef somewhere near the Arctic Circle, the player plays as Colt, the former head of security. Faced with an island and existence caught in an endless time loop, Colt resolves to break the time loop. Doing so requires killing the eight creators of the loop in one day, and so, Colt sets about memorising the day and perfecting his homicidal routine.

In terms of its gameplay, Deathloop is, in many ways, recreating the process of speedrunning as its primary game mechanic. Its end state is being able to run through its levels with the barest minimum of hacking, slashing, and gunning, having memorised the exact route to take for that perfect run. The process of learning this route is more arduous, but again, that’s inevitable with a speed run. Speed running is a long process of repeating the same actions over and over so that, when it finally does all come together, it is a thing of beauty.

There is an aesthetic here.

The role death plays within a game is an interesting one. Within a game, it’s generally an end state, or at least, something to be avoided. While games sometimes play with the concept of death, it remains something to be overcome. Within speedrunning, while death within a speedrun attempt is a fail state, death on the path to learning that speedrun is not. Rather, each death is a lesson and a chance to refine techniques and learn what does and does not work. It’s vital to the entire process, and as such, is almost something to seek out rather than something to overcome. It’s only in the final attempt, once everything that can be learned has been learned that death truly becomes an enemy.

Ah, a lovely tea time

This is the dynamic that Deathloop captures. Though it is a first-person shooter, at its heart, it’s a game built to mimic speedrunning, and which requires a speedrunning mindset. Death is, both in and out of game, a learning opportunity and the inevitable step one must take to reach that perfect run. What matters in a run is not the progress made or who died, but what was learned, and how that knowledge can be carried into the next attempt. Seeing a game actually capture this dynamic and this drive within the plot itself, and feed an entire game into it is refreshing and fun.

This sense of fun is, of course, helped by the fact that the game itself is quite fun. The setting is a surreal and fascinating one, and the characters within it dynamic and interesting. I wanted to explore every inch of the world, scuttling along rooftops and slipping through windows, just to see what the world had to offer me. If death is ultimately just a learning experience, then I wanted to learn everything I could between them.

I’ll paint it in blood!

Ultimately, Deathloop is a fun experiment into how death can be viewed within games, and what makes a player feel like their attempt was meaningful. Like many games, what a game gives is dependent on what the player seeks to get out of it. With Deathloop, the game wholeheartedly agrees that a game over doesn’t mean the fun is over, and that indeed, perhaps more of the world ought to approach an end as another sort of beginning.

Developer: Arkane Lyon

Genre: Fps

Year: 2021

Country: France

Language: English

Play Time: 16-20 Hours

Youtube: https://youtu.be/rxtQpl9mc34