Let It Die Review

Let It Die
Released: December 3, 2016
First Played: August 25, 2017
Finished: August 23, 2025
Developed by: Grasshopper Manufacturer
Published by: GungHo Entertainment
Directed by: Hideyuki Shin
Produced by: Shuji Ishikawa
Designed by: Noriaki Kazama
Art by: Takashi Kasahara
Written by Muga Takeda
Music by: Akira Yamaoka
Engine by: Unreal Engine 3 by Epic Games
Released on: Sony Playstation 4, Sony Playstation 5, & Valve Steam
Played on: Playstation 4
Genre: Hack ‘n Slash, Roguelike, Soulslike
Starring: Jukka Hilden & Kenta Hamano as “Uncle Death”

Boy is there a lot to say about this game, and it’s hard to say where to begin. So let’s go in chronological order.

In 1984 Video Game Publisher Namco released at game called “Tower of Druaga” created by Masanobu Endō, the creator of 1983’s “Xevious” and was a huge hit in Japan. Sparking the minds of imagination from gamers, Tower of Druaga borrowed elements from Namco’s other hit game 1980’s “Pac-Man” as well as the hit RPG 1981's “Wizardry”. Masabnobu’s goal was to create a game unlike Xevious or Pac-Man, a game with an ending. However since the game was made for the arcades, it needed to be not only difficult but fun to encourage players to keep putting in quarters. His idea? Create essentially a “Pac-Man RPG”, the player character is in a maze and must find a way out while defeating enemies. And thus the Wizardry elements come in. The protagonist Gilgamesh is on a quest to save the maiden Ki from the demon Druaga, using his sword to smite the many underlings of Druaga. However, the only way to progress is a secret, and that’s where the players of Japan made this a smash hit. By doing certain requirements on each floor, a treasure will spawn, the treasure may be good or bad, all it takes is making notes yourself or in this case, the player community gathered clues together to figure out the mystery. Tying hintbooks to arcade cabinets of Tower of Druaga so the next player could see what to do. A smash viral success in the days of pre-internet and even pre-guidebooks.

This became a precursor to the many many Japanese games that came out after and even non-Japanese games. Everything from 1984’s “Hydlide”, 1984’s “Dragon Slayer”, 1987’s "Ys", 1986’s "The Legend of Zelda", 2011’s "Dark Souls", & the many many Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs all took inspiration from this game. And so did it inspire in obvious fashion to Grasshopper Manufacturer’s Suda51.

Goichi “Suda51” Suda (5 is pronounced as “go” in japanese as well as 1 being “ichi”) was at a tender age of 16 when Tower of Druaga came out and was the prime age to be part of the conversation for that game and the many others that were viral hits in the schoolyard and arcades of japan. It obviously influenced him enough to get into video games himself and was able to make his big break in the industry as a director & writer for the hit Pro Wrestling video game series, “Fire Pro Wrestling” with the release of 1994’s “Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special”, 10 years after his school days of playing Tower of Druaga, in which he took the playerbase to a surprise when he made a shocking storyline about the trials of being a Pro Wrestler not being the glitz and glam it’s made out to be. It shocked the industry and got him regular work for his oddball storytelling. It garnered such acclaim from smash hits like 2005’s "Killer7", 2007’s "No More Heroes", & 2011’s "Shadows of the Damned". The well acclaimed puroresu mark, who’d come out of stage at video game conferences striking the “Pro Wres Love” pose from Pro Wrestler Keiji Mutoh, became the oddball of the industry that made critical hits even if they weren’t financial breakaways.

So along comes Muga Takeda and GungHo Entertainment. Primarily GungHo made mobile games and after an izakaya (the Japanese Equivalent of Bars) meeting over beers. GungHo, Muga, Suda51, & Grasshopper Manufacturer came together (quite literally with a merger) to create a game codenamed “Lily Bergamo” a game about a girl in the year 2043 who was destined to fight against a powerful enemy using robots. A trailer was made and they announced it at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show. Said to be mainly about combining the ideas of if you die, your character would be an enemy; as well as a companion app for mobile. However after a year later of nothing, the game was reborn as “Let It Die”.

Dropping the mobile gimmick but keeping the character death gimmick. The game pivoted to be a modern take of the Tower of Druaga. Using inspirations from the Namco Arcade hit, it combined many other elements to make it more appealing to the modern audience. Gone was the Sword & Sorcery in was Grunge Punk J-Rock, Skateboarding, absurd humor, a bunch of particle effects, retro-esque pixel art, and a Norwegian trying his best to sound Mexican while also playing the hype man and as Death itself. To say Let It die is a mismash is an understatement. However it kept the one thing that made Tower of Druaga a hit way back in the day, mystery and secrets and tons of them.

When you start the game you start at Floor One of the “Tower of Barbs”, a tower created by an apocalyptic scenario because of science trying to become too much like God, causing a plague of Mushrooms to sprout everywhere around the World. As you experience your first death of the game you find out, that in actuality you are not playing Let It Die. You are in fact playing a person inside a dingy arcade who playing Let It Die. Yes the game is a metanarrative focused game trying to recreate the feeling of those Japanese arcades during the Tower of Druaga. Complete with a NPC named “Meijin” (Japanese for “Master” as in someone who’s very skillful in certain subjects, and voiced by the 80s Japanese video game icon to kids Takahashi Meijin, who excelled at button pressing) who gives tips on how to play the game. And because the game has so many secrets, such as alternate floors, trap doors, and enemy mechanics, it encouraged online discussion and strategy to be formed just like those books hanging by a string on the Tower of Druaga cabinets.

As you make your way up you can find out more lore about the characters of the game but one thing is clear. The tower is populated by a majority of people trying to defy God and reaching the Top of the Tower of Barbs. No one knows what’s at the top but the rumor is you get a wish if you do, “So come on Senpai, get your way up there” as said by the comic relief and guide character Uncle Death, a skateboarding golf-enthusiast specter of death who is your aid as you climb. Always providing encouragement. Each time you face off and beat one of the “Dons” of the Tower of Barbs you get a commemorative photo taken with the attendant and Uncle Death. The attendant is where I finally talk about the main criticism about the game. When you die you are given the option to spend currency known as “Death Metals” to continue where you were. If you choose to say yes, you lose a Death Metal and continue, if you don’t you have to start all over from the beginning with the only way to continue with the character you had is by either defeating it in the Tower where you left off or spend the regular currency at a hefty price to bring them back. Now while you can earn Death Metals, you can also buy them with real money and that’s the big issue. Each Death Metal comes out to the equivalent of $0.25, a quarter, you know, like you’d spend at an arcade. See the problem? Gamers for over 2 decades of arcades becoming niche for Chuck E Cheeses or Dave & Busters Restaurants, have moved on from the genre, instead preferring a “paid up front” model liken to that of the game’s closest comparison Dark Souls with the occasional DLC. So here comes a game that asks every time you die, to spend money to continue? Not happening for a lot of people. That’s why despite the game having 9 Million Downloads as a Free To Play Game, only a little more than 7% have beaten the first boss at the 10th Floor, that’s 630,000 people. Nonetheless the amount of people who’ve actually beaten the game at 0.6% or 54,000 people, an elite group but nowhere near enough to make the game a big hit. The same can be said for the eventual sequel to Let It Die, Deathverse which open and closed up shop in less than a year of service, an abject failure.

Regardless, as you climb and eventually beat the game you find out the ending is not quite what people expected but is certainly in style of Suda51’s absurdity. And in the post game that was updated months and years after, the game finally makes it apparent inspiration known outside of that of the Tower of Druaga. For as you climb, you find out that things are not what they seem. The tower gets weirder and more heavenly, like the further you climb, the closer you are to God. And after every 50 floors, you get a letter from uncle Death saying how impressed he is by your skill but “you should come back down now, for safety”. The next letter warns about how you could actually die, as in you the player playing the game in that virtual arcade, if you go any higher. The next letter finally pulls the trigger and we see that Uncle Death is acting as the voice of God, telling you to stop or else ✋︎ ⬥︎♓︎●︎●︎ ♍︎♒︎♋︎■︎♑︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎❒︎ ●︎♋︎■︎♑︎◆︎♋︎♑︎♏︎ ♋︎■︎♎︎ ⬧︎⧫︎❒︎♓︎🙵♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♎︎□︎⬥︎■︎📬︎.

That’s right, the game is telling the story of the Tower of Babel from the Bible. How man was so full of himself that he tried to reach God, and God struck down man and changed his language to stop them from playing God. As a christian this hit me deeply and made me fall in love with the game’s story. Despite that in all honesty, the gameplay itself isn’t very good. The controls are stiff and the lack of invincibility frame on anything regarding dodging, made this a tough game to get through. I started the game in 2017 and only took it seriously after they started a free limited revive campaign so i could actually make progress. But the satisfaction I feel from beating the game does feel like I just beat an old arcade game of my youth I never could beat before, and if that was the goal for Let It Die, then it succeeded with flying colors. It now being 9 years after the release of the game, and the sequel "Let It Die 2" still under development, Let It Die didn’t really leave a mark on the industry in a good way. If anything it taught the industry that price gouging your customers, even if you try to fix it later, does nothing but bring bad reputation to both the game and the developers. Something some games like 2023’s "Overwatch 2" is still learning the consequences of today. One could hope there’d be a push for more concerns for the player’s wallet. But in a money-first industry, as like in the 80s with Tower of Druaga, it’s hard to say it ever will.

I give Grasshopper Manufacturer’s “Let It Die” a C+, it passes as a “bad but good game” if that makes sense. The aesthetics are great, and the music is inspiring, but the gameplay loop leaves a burning hole in my pocket to be desired.