Death Unphased Review

Your goal is simple in Death Unphased — get to the end of the level. But, completing it is far from that. With a slew of abilities and a dash, you have to make it through four Parts, with a total of 72 stages each.

The first thing I thought of when I saw Death Unphased was that it looked like a speedrun-focused Celeste that would likely make me cry more than the C-Sides. Although I wasn't entirely wrong in my assumption (I've died a lot), I found that throughout my playthrough, I didn't have as many deaths as I had anticipated, which turned out to be a good thing.

Starting off, Death Unphased essentially tells you to progress through the entire game first in order to learn more about the controls and skills that you will be using to start your speedrun farming for the B, A, S, and even the secret Z rank. If you know me, you know I'm generally stubborn and ignored this rule, getting a total of three S ranks (on the first three levels) before I gave up entirely and decided, "You know what? Maybe we listen to Two Slash Nine Games".

As you advance through the levels, the game slowly introduces you to new mechanics, some of which you'll use in earlier levels to get better times, whilst others are unique to the levels from their introduction onward. I was actually really pleased with some of the new features added as I advanced, with incredibly enjoyable puzzles that made Death Unphased more like a puzzle platformer than a frustrating precision platformer.

Without going into too much detail to avoid spoiling the movement options, deciding whether you'll like Death Unphased is quite simple: if you like speedrunning and trying to learn the optimal time to get through any given level, you'll likely love it. If you're more interested in just playing through a precision platformer, you'll like it. If you have a little patience for these types of games, you'll hate it.

These categories might seem a bit simplistic, but they essentially teach you Death Unphased to its core: it's meant to be for those who want to shave mere milliseconds to get the best time and earn the covetous S and Z ranks. While its gameplay is definitely great as a casual precision platformer to pass through 72 levels of, the ever-present desire to earn a rank higher than A might become a bit much for some, as — for the first time in a very long time in my gaming experience — I felt its difficulty slightly detracted from my experience.

Now, this isn't to complain about the base game and its levels — if you don't care for the time and just look at the worlds to try to see how you are going to pass each one, it's a respectable title in its own regard. But for those who aspire for more, the consistent shaving of milliseconds feels less gratifying when it feels like it's either impossible or you aren't seeing a route that should otherwise be very obvious.

See, Death Unphased's gameplay is centred around finding unique ways to solve a puzzle. There is no one right way because the capability to phase through almost everything means that you can — realistically — go through the wall and to the end of the level if you time it correctly. But with this freedom of choice also came a feeling of ineptitude for me, where I was passing the level as it seemed the developers wanted me to through its layout... but my time was so suboptimal that getting the participation trophy of C felt almost wrong because I knew I'd done less than poorly. While other games are more straightforward about how to complete the levels, and it's up to you to figure out the tricks to do it as quickly as possible, Death Unphased presents not only how to do it quickly but which of all the ways to complete it you need to take.

Don't misunderstand me: I think that Death Unphased is a solid title. My problems came from my own incapability to perform as well as I wanted to and enjoy the experience to its full extent, as the ever-alluring S ranks became the ever-impossible S ranks. With various options to complete the stages and incentivisation to explore and think outside the box, I felt inept in my capability to formulate a plan of action that allowed me to get from point A to point B quickly enough.

If you're a fan of the precision platformer genre or are looking for a game to spend hours grinding for the best time possible, Death Unphased is going to be a great title for you to pick up. That said, the difficulty ceiling will aggressively separate the casuals from the professionals, making getting S and Z ranks challenging and fully completing the title a monumental task.