Death has never been so puzzling
The TV show 1000 Ways to Die explored the science behind the deaths of individuals that were reckless, fascinating and absolutely ridiculous. What made the show appealing was the dark humor that lightened the tone of otherwise depressing and disgusting events. 101 Ways to Die, developed by Four Door Lemons, shares a similar idea. The difference is the game shuns the science behind the deaths and makes you the scientist and assuages players with an art style that resembles Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare.
As the assistant to a lunatic professor, you help him recreate his book on 101 ways to kill people that was destroyed in an explosion. He wants you to combine various traps to obliterate, smash, burn and impale creatures called Splatts and recreate deadly combinations so he can record them.
There are six lab rooms (three in the preview) to get through with a number of levels in each. Each room builds on tactics and strategies introduced from completed rooms and increases in difficulty. You’re assigned a number of traps in each level and you have to place them in opportune spots to force the Splatts into your traps. You might receive any combination of mines, bumpers, harpoons, cannons, slippery goop or even teleporters, among other things not shown in the preview. Once you’ve set your traps, the Splatts walk in their pre-determined path and if you set them correctly, you will witness lots of bloody mayhem. But you have to complete the stated objectives. If you don’t, you will have to retry. One example of an objective is make a Splatt step on a mine and blow it up into spikes.
Planning takes time and the results can be entertaining
Many levels also require specific timing on top of proper placement of objects. A lot of trial and error goes into making the Splatts do what you want. You feel like a mad scientist performing the scientific method, testing what theories will hold under the scrutiny of Splatts living or dying on your watch. And it’s exciting after you’ve tested theory after theory and you finally get it right. I jumped out of my chair one time after I made a boulder unintentionally bounce up and crush two Splatts; which checked off every objective and gave me the number one spot on the leaderboard.
Every level has a leaderboard and three stars you can earn. You don’t have to care about the leaderboards but you do have to care about stars. You can’t progress without them. Earning three stars requires you beat the primary and optional objectives, which also gives you a very high score; a score that put me in the top 10 of the leaderboards every time. But that probably won’t be the case when the game comes out.
Usually missing the third star was a matter of minor tweaks, so any time I earned two stars I would retry the level, make my tweaks and try again until I got it. That was addicting. Making your way up the leaderboard can be confusing, though. Sometimes I would be behind a person by 100 points but the game doesn’t explain how all points are distributed. You know you earn points by completing objectives, but it’s unclear of the other ways you might be able to tweak your setup to maximize point value. If Four Door Lemons makes that clear, I can imagine people treating this game like racers treat time trials. The top spot on the leaderboards comes down to maximizing everything to create the fastest time. The potential for that sort of precision is in this game if that’s your thing.
This is what you call it when someone slips into a lava pit. Right, Anakin?
Unfortunately, there are a few things that suck the fun out of the game currently. It’s extremely slow. Splatts walk like their feet weigh 300 lbs. You can make the game faster by holding the F key, but the fast speed should be the default speed and the fast-forward option should be faster. The speed also takes away from the impact of the kills. It’s not as funny or gruesome to watch a Splatt slowly jump and descend on a swinging spike log and then its body is completely butchered.
And every Splatt death ends up with its body splitting into several pieces and blood exploding from its body. It’s boring. There’s a reason why ragdoll is so much fun to watch and it seems like Four Door Lemons doesn’t quite understand that in the build I played. Even when there are deaths that make you cringe or smile in delight, you might miss those moments because you’re focused on the success or failure of your traps. You can watch a replay which shows close-ups of each individual death, but that’s still not enough to make up for the speed and bland animations.
Navigating the UI in 101 Ways to Die makes me wonder if Four Door Lemons should have waited to release this to the press. The meat of the game flows well but getting around the UI exercises your patience. You can zoom the camera in, but the camera first zooms to a specific point on the level, then you have to slide the camera with the WASD keys to get it in the correct spot. It would be much more efficient to zoom in on the spot where the mouse arrow is located.
Another example is attempting to see which trap you might be editing. If you want to change something about a trap, there is a subtle glow but it could be brighter. It’s especially hard to see on mines because they’re so thin. Speaking of editing traps, it would be more efficient to click the trap you want to edit, rather than deleting the trap and putting it back on the map the way you want it. There are other UI issues, but it would take too much time talking about them and some are a result of the game being in beta.
Blood is always in season
At the moment the troublesome UI is a huge turnoff and because of that, it’s hard for me to recommend that you anticipate this game. What saves 101 Ways to Die from a worse recommendation are the wonderfully crafted puzzles. This is a puzzle game first and a stylistic killing game second, so if you’re into physics-based puzzle games, you have to keep your eye on this one. If you’re on the fence, I can’t say you would be convinced at this point, but if they can fix the issues with UI, speed the game up and make the stylistic deaths on par with their puzzle design, you should absolutely keep your eye on this one.
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