Death’s Hangover

Genre: Arcade Brick Breaker

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Death’s Hangover is an Arcade-style Brick Breaker released on PC in 2016 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2020. In this game, Death is recovering from a hangover and discovers that his collection of souls has been raided by Bastard Dracula (as he’s referred to throughout the game). And so Death recruits two moronic dead warriors, Andy and Bob, reincarnated as a pair of women (for reasons unclear), to raid Bastard Dracula’s castle and retrieve the missing souls. They evidently decide to do so by having one crawl inside a metal ball that the other flings around each room using a discarded mattress (also for reasons that are unclear). As you might guess from the premise, Death’s Hangover is a pretty silly game, and while it’s humor is somewhat juvenile, it nevertheless has a fair amount of charm to its absurdity.

The presentation here has a 16-bit-style pixel art presentation that’s decent but nothing spectacular, maintaining the cartoony style of the game. This is backed by an energetic chiptune soundtrack that’s decent, but tends to fade into the background with the sounds of the ball impacting things and the grunts of the characters. Overall, it’s a presentation that works well for the game, giving the game a good, arcadey feel, although it’s not really pushing any boundaries.

The gameplay, on the other hand, actually does do some interesting things. Players must not only keep the ball from falling off the bottom of the screen, but must evade enemies and their projectiles with the paddle (er, mattress). This isn’t too unusual, but this game goes the extra step of allowing players to hold down a button to slow down or speed up the ball, adding an extra element to the matter that helps players to multitask and make sure both ball and paddle are safe. In addition to this, players can get multiple upgradeable Arkanoid-style power-ups, with players being able to keep two of these at a time and swap between them.

Unfortunately, this does have a negative side-effect of making the game often seem a bit easy, *especially when the player gets just the right power-up combination and relies heavily on the “slow ball” button. Thankfully, the game seems to anticipate this and make this button gradually less effective in a level as it continues to be used. The game also has bosses, many of which can be particularly difficult. On the other hand, players who manage to hit optional chests containing “souls” can use these souls as a continue.

A few other points of note here. Firstly, this game includes a pretty good co-op mode where the second player takes the role of Death, who can’t affect the ball, but can shoot enemies and use a shield to block enemy projectiles. This mode acts as a “girlfriend mode” of sorts, as it is much easier to play as Death than as the paddle. Also, this game includes a mode that allows players to custom-create their own levels, and while it looks like there is an option to share those levels, it seems like this is a vestigial remnant of the PC version of the game, as this level-sharing option is not selectable in this version, which is a shame.

Finally, it bears mention that Death’s Hangover is a fairly short game, easily finishable within an hour or so. However, for the low price of $5, I’d say this works out to be a fair price, as the game itself is pretty fun while it lasts.

All things considered, Death’s Hangover is a solid Arcade-style Brick Breaker that has some fun and relatively unique mechanics that set it apart, and while it’s short length and reduced features compared to the PC version are a bit disappointing, it’s hard to complain much when it’s selling for $5. For that price, this is a game well worth giving a try.

tl;dr – Death’s Hangover is an Arcade-style Brick Breaker where players take the role of a pair of idiot warriors that Death has resurrected to invade Bastard Dracula’s castle and take back the souls that the villain stole while Death was on a bender. It’s a solid entry into its genre, with some unique and fun mechanics and a silly but endearing personality that set it apart. It’s a bit short and lacking features that were in the PC version, but for $5 it’s well worth a look if you want a cheap, fun Arcade-style game.

Grade: B

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