Postmortem: One Must Die (Extended Cut) Reviews

It's difficult for me to write a negative review of this game because it tries very hard to be the kind of game that I enjoy: interesting and original. The following are reasons why this game fell short of that mark. 1. Very poor sprite animations. Distractingly hideous. 2. An abundance of grammatical and spelling errors. 3. Meaningless conversation choices. 4. Lazy variation of endings, despite being the selling point of this game. A few good surprises were had though. 1. The ending (nothing more than a collection of news clippings) is altered by more than your choice of victim. Your conversations with the dinner guests can convince them to do certain things which affect the ending. 2. The history of the world is well realized. 3. No hand holding. You are thrown into the world and left to experiment. The game doesn't make it particularly obvious how to get the ending you want. Killing the guy you dislike the most might actually result in a bigger "villain" rising to power. Going to places you're not supposed to might get you in trouble. 4. You're free to make tough moral decisions. All of the characters are likable and hatable in the same breath. The game doesn't bludgeon you with a preachy message, nor does it bore you with a simple tale of good guy vs. bad guy. At its total, this game would look great on the drawing board. There are many areas of this game that make the player excited with the possibilities, but it doesn't feel like a completed game. As a free flash game (or demo) this game would be acceptable, but at 7 dollars I can't recommend this to anyone, even the most hardcore of text-based fans.

Let me start by saying I actually do recommend you to play this game. It's execution and premise are pretty damn great. However, it remains an underdeveloped idea that is not worth five Euros in my opinion. The idea of saving, ruining or keeping the status quo of a country torn by two opposing sides of an industrial revolution is a great idea, but the game offers but one scenario. One that can be replayed a lot of times, but still, it's but one scenario in what could have been a very deep and amazing political simulator. On their site, you can get the game for free, or pay what you want. I like supporting Indie developers, but the Steam price is way too steep. So I'd suggest getting this from their site and paying around 1,50, which I feel is a fair price for a nicely executed idea that needs quite a bit more depth to justify paying more.

Not worth the price IMO. There is only one "act" (one level of the game to play through) which took me 30 minutes when I spoke to every person in the room and went into a couple of side rooms. Each conversation with each NPC can become a very long, very boring dialogue you cannot get out of until you go through the whole thing. Conversations would have been more interesting if they were much shorter and not so useless. I typically learned everything I wanted to know early on in each conversation. There is nothing in the game to prevent you from choosing a random target to kill, so you can easily pay $7.00 for less than one minute of gameplay. Overall, this game was an interesting concept which was stuffed with uninteresting monologues and only one act. Not worth the money paid at all.

Extended? This game is one level that lasts 30 minutes at most *if* you poke at *everything*. I like the concept and quality of content, but most demo's and tutorials are longer than this. I picked this up in a bundle, but I would have been furious had a paid full retail for 30 minute game.

Game thrusts you unceremonially into a dinner party and tells you to kill one of the six guests you can speak to. You can read a few newspaper clippings strewn about and go into very superficial conversations with the guests, mainly concerened with a conservative/liberal conflict in their imaginary country. Conversations are often ended abruptly and guests would stop speaking to you afterwards, leaving you with very little to go on. Once you've made a choice, an epilogue is shown, presenting the results of your choice and any influences you may have had on the guests due to dialogue options. Overall, it feels incomplete and the story and characters are uninteresting and the resolution is very anticlimactic. Seeing one resolution is enough as it gives you a fair idea of what would've happened if you had done things differently. Game is short, took me a bit over an hour and I did go into all dialogue options and actions available. For a game that handles choices and their consequences better, check The Novelist.

Potentially a good game, but possibly one of the shortest I have ever played with little to no replay value what so ever. It seems like a fantastic 'first level' but for an extended cut/release? I was left dissapointed. The universe drew me in but the game left me wanting more, It was like watching a film and just as the protaganist is introduced the credits roll. Save your money on this one in hopes for a more final release but keep your eye out.

This is hardly what I would call a game, it is more of a glorfided demo. You basically just read and make ONE decision. No interactivity. The concept has a lot of promise, but charging people for this "game" is almost criminal.

Well... Like the reviews say, it is a short one. Definitely not worth the full price, but on a 75% sale for 1,25 euros, I don't really regret getting it. Basically you are one of the many reapers, sent to an event to collect a soul. You're introduced to the case by a secretary, who you can't flirt more than say: "Tell me about you" She then asks whether you'd like to be seen as a male or female by the mortals, but I'm not really sure if it makes any difference. The guests are the same and the conversation may end up in the same way despite your dialogue choices. It feels kind of clumsy when you play it again and pick different choices, only to see them answer the same way as they did during last time. You CAN just go up to someone and kill them there, but the purpose is to learn about the guests, and then make a choice on who you will collect. The annoying thing is that if you want to see the results in the same situation, only with a different person dead, you have to do everything again in the same way. Talk to same people, pick the same dialogue options, etc. etc. Also, I've only played it 2 times, and both times, the person you kill seems to talk the same way, even if it is a different person... I think that one thing that could've made this far better would have been options to better interact with people, and maybe add a few things that switch by random each time you play. Ultimately, the controls feel a tad bit clumsy, and the game does seem a bit laggy time to time. That may be just my own PC, though. But, in the end, I can not recommend the game for the full price. For 1,25euros though, sure, it gave me some amusement. This could work on a phone, be a reaper and kill a person each time you go take a shit. But when at computer, nah, I don't think I'll end up playing this that often.

This is a nifty adventure game for those that like to read. Unfortunately it can be very short or as long as you want it to be, this is because there is essentially one "map" and literally you only get to kill one person. The concept behind it all is that you talk to everyone and pick the choices you want. Those choices will then affect the ending you gain. Essentially you then play through again and again, each time picking different choices and the person you "claim" Overall, there should be more to this game as I was hoping there would be something after the first level but literally the game can last 2 minutes (if you randomly pick someone and don't care about the choices or how they affect the story) or hours long if you decide to explore and go deeper trying to find every combination and choice

If this is the extended cut, I have a hard time visualizing what the length of the initial release was. For all of the promise the premise of investigating several characters and picking one to die carried, the execution including perhaps 6 rooms and less than 10 characters left me feeling as if there was much more possibility to be played with and explored than is offered here. It held my attention while I played it, and I was very interested to see how my decisions might influence the outcome of the game, but ultimately I don't feel as if I got enough play time out of the title for it to have been worth the dollar value I paid for it.