It’s no secret that gamers love a good rogue-lite hack and slash, especially if it hits hard in the spooky vibes. Death or Treat, served up by small Indie developers, Saona Studios, sets up shop in the ghostly HallowTown and sends an unlikely hero on a quest to save local businesses from the terrifying grasp of major corporations. Were the efforts to restore local businesses a treat? Not quite enough to satiate my tastes.

Playing as a ghost aptly named Scary, a travelling salesperson of the independently owned, candy-specialising cart, Ghost Mart, we make our way to HallowTown. On arrival, the local vendors waste no time in pointing out the lack of merchants, swiftly assigning us to the gruelling task of restoring the “spirit,” or in this case, business, to the neighbourhood. To combat consumerism, naturally, the candy salesperson needs to brave the corporate giants and take them down one by one, all while collecting resources to restore the town’s business district from the brink of death.

The moment Scary’s carriage whizzed past in the opening cutscene I was in love with the art style. The 2D hand-painted environments and traditional cartoon animations are whimsical, adorable, and packed with charm. I expected a little bit more gloom, but thankfully, this was mostly avoided in HallowTown, with enough going on to keep it light-hearted. Animations of characters in particular were so enjoyable that I spent a good chunk of time just watching them go about their business. Unfortunately, this doesn’t necessarily carry beyond the bounds of HallowTown.

Once Scary is sent off to fight the corporate world, I was having a lot less fun. The energy of HallowTown is replaced with environments and enemies devoid of personality that feel dead on arrival. Each stage was dull with mindless minions and limited level variety, where each felt similar to the last. As a rogue-lite, I was hoping each run would be more distinguishable, but instead, I came across the same few stages each time and none of them stood out. The side–scrolling backgrounds tend to be repetitive, decor in the foreground can obstruct vision, and progression is linear with a few small ledges for platforming, but no real reason for them to be there.

As a hack-and-slash, the combat is serviceable but bare bones compared to what I’ve come to expect from rogue-lites. Too many enemies would be on-screen at a time in a small space and it was difficult to tell who was attacking. There was virtually no feedback in hitting enemies, no feeling of impact, limited sound effects, and on a controller, no haptic vibrations for weapon swings. Overall, encounters felt clunky and underwhelming – it was challenging at times, but mostly for the wrong reasons and I didn’t find a thrill in it.

There are enough rogue-lite elements for a few casual gaming sessions, but it doesn’t really pick up until enough resources are collected to start opening up the storefronts. The early stages were surprisingly difficult, and only being equipped with a simple stick and a very slow-charging skill bar, I died early and often.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long to collect enough resources for upgrades and tools which made early levels a breeze. The grind for gear does get tedious and I didn’t feel particularly invested in restoring HallowTown. The premise is strong, but the execution isn’t quite as powerful. It felt like all work and no play.

My travels were riddled with technical issues, including frequent frame drops and stuttering, which was enough to ruin a good run, and changing the graphical settings from Ultra to Very Low made no difference to performance. I played on Very Low throughout and it looked and ran exactly the same as Ultra, with no improvements to how it ran. It felt poorly optimized and overall made gameplay far less enjoyable.

The music, however, was enjoyable, capturing Nightmare Before Christmas’ light-hearted Halloween festiveness. Most audio suited the atmosphere, but I very quickly grew tired of the town’s dog barking every few seconds and the short music loop when out of town. There is so much care into the look and feel of HallowTown but it doesn’t translate to the gameplay beyond the bounds of the town. It’s a shame, I was looking forward to more glorious places and even more glorious combat.

Death or Treat has so much charm in visuals but at the cost of delivering serviceable but uninspired gameplay. What Saona Studios delivered has all the makings of a good rogue-lite in a neat little wrapper, but the candy inside lacks enough substance for my tastes. I’m hoping as time passes, Death or Treat gets sweeter and more satisfying.

Written by: Yasmin Noble