“You know, I can still refuse
to answer your questions.”
“Let’s talk about something
else.”
(The player is going to be seeing a lot of this sprite.)
Posted by on Sun Dec 31 2023 (Updated: Thu Jul 11 2024)
A Date with Death is a supernatural/romance themed visual novel (primarily point-and-click). The game follows a player-created character encountering a chain of odd, coincidental, and otherwise deadly events but is consistently saved by sheer luck. As it turns out, the Grim Reaper is out for the player’s soul.
Despite how the game presents itself, it’s actually funny. There is no dating in this game unless the post-COVID world considers evening video chats as dates.
Everyone types like teenagers in the anachronistic 20XX, the year in which the game is set.
The Grim Reaper is a white-haired young man from the Underworld with a job as his title suggests. He is nicknamed “Grim” by the player character. His real name isn’t revealed until later in the game.
The Grim Reaper is introduced through a mysterious chat application that seemingly had installed itself onto the player character’s laptop. He has an awkward introduction as the player character initially ignores him. He (tries to) act suave and charming on video chat but can easily become flustered.
“You know, I can still refuse
to answer your questions.”
“Let’s talk about something
else.”
(The player is going to be seeing a lot of this sprite.)
Imagine some goth boy putting on a dark and mysterious persona in order to impress his love interest. He however spills his spaghetti. If you don’t like the character, he can come across as narcissistic.
If the Grim Reaper reaps an average of one soul per day over his career, then he is around 22 years old.
Maybe if I sent you to Australia, the wildlife would do my job for me.
— Grim Reaper
In somewhere that isn’t Australia, the player character (PC) rents a single bedroom apartment and lives alone with a pet cat, dog, snake, or hampster. They are employed for an unspecified occupation (which isn’t significant except for one short conversation).
In my playthroughs, I was:
(The mortician part doesn’t matter too much.)
… the former pursuing an ideal outcome in winning a bet against the Grim Reaper and generally being kind, and the latter, unlocking the bad endings and overall doing the opposite just to see what happens.
The customization of the player character mainly affects the choice of words within narration and other parts of dialogue. It however does not affect the available dialogue options for the player. Even so, there are several conversation where there is no choice but to pick the one and only option. The player is railroaded for the following:
… Regardless of the player indicating reluctance or outright insulting Grim beforehand.
… To a laptop that got hacked.
At the beginning of the game, the player character is alerted by a notification from an unrecognized chat program. They try to ignore it even as a hacked laptop presents serious problems such as identity theft, data loss, and financial loss.
The severity:
the chat application installed and reinstalls itself
the chat application can restart the computer (elevated privileges)
Ignoring this is like the attitude of a ditzy teenager who doesn’t have any real responsibilities facilitated through a computer.
The main character laments
the cost of a hypothetical new laptop but, unlike
FBI agents,1 affords to individually rent an
apartment.
No spoilers.
The 7th day starting at night indicates this is the ending the player will receive.
The achievement for the full bad ending and Eavesdropping Champion can not be accomplished together; the player character is too spent to bother.
Can coincide with the achievement Dead Roots
The player character should have taken their pet to a veterinarian instead of resorting to a paranormal anomaly they have no control over. It’s an obvious way to avoid the fate the Grim Reaper had hinted of.
My suspension of disbelief: slightly disturbed.
If the 7th day starts at daytime, the player isn’t on track for the bad ending.
there are two good endings; this refers to ending #3
there is an explanation why grim reapers are living people from the Underworld and why they still have emotions or can fall in love (or get aroused), if the player consistently eavesdrops on the neighbors for each day of the week
I am uncertain about the prospects of living as a fugitive forever hunted by a supernatural order of grim reapers. Constantly being on the run conflicts with self-determination by restricting what choices can be made in life.
“tiredness”, a strange nominalization, among others, occurs in the text; -ness to transform an adjective to a noun but “tired” is a past-tense verb
even if you make a male character, much of the dialogue still has feminine idiosyncrasies
not many objects to interact with that are relevant to the plot and story: a potted plant, a pet, a door, and dialogue options.
Not the best writing, not the best visual novel, but I can appreciate the humor.
“If I have to listen to
even more of your stupid nicknames, then I may combust on the
spot.”
The Grim Reaper is a fun character that could be interesting in more scenarios than romance or patreon-exclusive NSFW art. A non-romantic context, how he behaves and interacts with other grim reapers, would be an interesting augment to his character. I don’t see that happening though.
Many FBI agents struggle to make ends meet, housing costs are to blame : NPR, https://archive.is/https://www.npr.org/2024/04/11/1243982287/fbi-agents-housing-costs↩︎
Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride, https://yewtu.be/watch?v=y3lANHeZey0↩︎
