Death Relives Review — Skinned

An interesting debut for indie devs Nyctophile Studios, Death Relives ambitiously enters the horror genre with a unique setting, bringing Aztec mythology into video game horror in an earnest attempt to play with “big boys” like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. While the premise is strong and heavily leaned on, it can feel underutilized at times. Overall, the game surprisingly struggles to fit within its own genre, with its very theme fighting it in places. Death Relives feels like an eager first step for a new company, one worth appreciating. While I would say you should try the game out for yourself if it interests you, it serves more as an exciting tease of what’s to come from this studio, assuming they learn from their mistakes.

And learning from those mistakes, I think they are, as the game’s Steam page features a message from the developers thanking players for constructive criticism and announcing that future updates and changes will be coming to the game. What those changes are exactly, I couldn’t tell you, but I can certainly say what I think needs to be changed.

Death Relives follows protagonist Adrian and his encounter with Xipe Totec, the flayed god, a Mesoamerican deity of life, death, rebirth, and much more. The inclusion of this deity is both one of the game’s strongest points and biggest flaws.

The use of Mesoamerican/Aztec mythology is obviously a huge selling point for this title. It heads in a direction rarely seen in horror games or video games generally. My attraction to Death Relives, like that of many of the game’s players, is undoubtedly the promise of this theme.

There are areas in the game where the theme excels. Shrines to the god are scattered throughout an old manor repurposed as his shrine, you wear a skin cloak to trick his followers, etc. It’s an incredibly strong and evocative theme that gets you excited. In other areas, things feel like generic murder house levels with Aztec symbols thrown in, though it doesn’t break the setting considering the whole… flaying sacrifice aspect.

The implementation of the god himself, in my opinion, is a miss.

Using an actual deity as your horror antagonist is super hard to pull off. There is, of course, the question to be asked of if the portrayal of Xipe Totec in this game matches the mythology; he’s portrayed as something of a brute obsessed with death and skinning, and while skinning sacrifices are part of his mythology, there’s a whole rebirth message attached to it that goes beyond the cruelty of the act. A god of war, yes, but also of the harvest, of renewal, of life, etc. It invokes all kinds of complicated questions that can make the game’s portrayal feel “dumbed down.”

There is also the fact that he is a god; being physically chased down a hallway by a literal god, who takes the form of a, what, seven-foot-tall guy, feels like a gross underutilization of the character’s power.

The god’s physicality feels rather underwhelming, too. Horror often plays into the corruption of the comfortable. It should make you feel anxious and uneasy. A good horror monster is designed to challenge your understanding of the normal, using strange silhouettes and perverted misuse of the familiar to make the viewer uncomfortable. Xipe Totec is described as a god who wears the skins of his sacrifices, carries a staff, and wears a ceremonial headdress. There are so many opportunities in that description alone to make a truly terrifying silhouette of a monster. Instead, the game portrays him as a big guy wearing bone-shaped armor and death symbolism. He isn’t scary. He feels like a character out of Smite designed to look cool and intimidating, but in a “woah he’s so tough” way and not in a scary way.

The scariest part of his design, if you ask me, was his pixelated junk.

While the game’s hour-long tutorial was initially full of tension, the inclusion of Xipe Totec near the end actually killed all of the horror for me and is the primary reason the game doesn’t work in the horror genre.

To quickly summarize, the game has you completing challenges throughout the manor as Xipe Totec chases you. He follows the sounds you make, but a special handgun and dagger can kill him. Doing so gives you a limited period where you don’t have to deal with him being around, but you have to eventually bring him back, or else you will die yourself.

Xipe Totec is intended to feel like Resident Evil’s Mister X or other chaser villains, but Mister X, he is not. The fact that you can, and I kid you not, kill this monster before you are out of the tutorial kills any chance he had of being an intimidating foe. Not only that, you can at all times track his location on the map with the use of a radar.

There are little elements of the game here or there that don’t help its case as a horror title, such as the main character’s poor voice acting and abundance of voice lines, less-than-stellar writing, and underwhelming animations. Overall, it boils down to the fact that the intended horror simply isn’t scary. I mentally checked out of the game pretty quickly. If anything, I would describe Death Relives as more of an adventure game, but one that also isn’t incredibly appealing because of its slow pacing.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of Death Relives. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Death Relives is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.