Review: How ‘Have A Nice Death’ stands out from the rogue-lite crowd

Meet Death, the CEO of Death Inc in the game. — Gearbox Publishing/TNS

It's hard to stand out as a rogue-lite. The genre has grown in popularity in recent years because of the success of instant classics such as Spelunky and Hades. These games built a reputation on their difficulty and they balanced that out with their addictive and deep gameplay.

Similar to the original rogue-lites, these games force players to run through procedurally generated dungeons, but the catch is that players only have one life to reach the end. If they die, they have to start over. It's a brutal game design, but rogue-lites mitigate the challenge by letting players carry over at least one element from their run.