Death Squared

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Death Squared is a character-based Puzzle game released on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2017 and ported to mobile devices in 2018. In this game, players take the role of AI programs moving cube-based characters in a dangerous testing environment, with cubes needing to coordinate their movements to succeed.

The presentation in this game is mostly nothing special, using fairly simple 3D character designs in an abstract environment. These are cubes moving around in a world of cube blocks, and while the cubes themselves do have some nice details that lends them a bit of personality, they’re still relatively simple. This is backed by a light synthesized soundtrack that keeps the focus specifically on the Puzzle gameplay.

Really, the biggest bit of personality within Death Squared are voiced characters, a human and an AI program, speaking over the gameplay and commenting on your actions as well as having their own separate discussion about the human’s job and work life, and other various things. These little exchanges help to give the simple gameplay within the game a greater context and keep players interested to see more.

And while the gameplay is indeed simple, that’s not to say it doesn’t hide some fiendishly clever design. Your only interaction with this game is to move your cube robots around, with each analog stick corresponding to a different robot. However, these robots’ actions are often tied to the environment in various ways – moving one robot might move a corresponding platform, while moving the other may unleash deadly spikes. In addition, each color-coded robot has tasks that only it can perform – only a blue robot can pass through blue transparent cubes, step on blue buttons, and block blue beams that are deadly to the other robots, for example.

Utilizing this, the game’s level design makes for some wonderfully clever puzzles, where you really need to pay close attention to all the moving pieces and understand how they interact in order to solve things. In single-player, this requires some degree of dexterity, not only keeping in mind which analog stick moves which robot, but also being mindful of everything else each robot’s movements affect in the particular level you’re in. In the game’s co-op multiplayer, this task is distributed among the multiple players, really requiring full coordination and cooperation in a way that makes this an *outstanding co-op game.

There are only two major issues here, one that’s not the game’s fault, and one that is. First, let it be known that if you suffer from Joy-Con drift, this game will be much more difficult, as slight unintended movements for one robot can have a domino effect that could end up killing another and forcing you to restart the level. Like I said, not this game’s fault, but frustrating all the same. However, I do think this game can sometimes get a bit too clever with its puzzles, with hidden deathtraps springing into view only after you’ve sprung them and killed a robot, resulting in having to restart. This design choice means that this game will have a lot of trial and error, along with a lot of deaths that aren’t really the players’ fault.

Still, while I can complain about this Death Squared’s sadistic design in places, that doesn’t change how brilliant the puzzle design is, its excellent co-op, and how it manages to do so much using so little. If you’re a fan of Puzzle games, especially if you want to play in co-op and especially if you crave a challenge, this is definitely a Puzzle game worth getting.

tl;dr – Death Squared is a character-based Puzzle game where players control cube-shaped robots to try to coordinate to solve puzzles. This game is simple yet fiendishly clever, with some superb puzzle design and excellent co-op play. It’s biggest issue is a tendency towards springing surprise traps on the player resulting in a lot of deaths and trial-and-error gameplay. Still, for those who crave a challenge, Death Squared should prove to be an excellent choice within the genre.

Grade: B

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