Playing difficult games has now become a stable for the modern gamer. We have our Dark Souls, Dead Cells and Portals to infuriate and beat us after a long hard day’s work. Why do we love punishment so much in gaming? Well for those who want the ultimate challenge look no further. Kaet must Die combines exploration, horror, and problem-solving. It creates what could be one of the most thrilling games so far this year. Oh, and it’s also really hard, like super-duper difficult. That’s pretty much the whole marketing for this game right there.
Meet Kaetheran – Kaet Must Dies Psionicist
You play Kaetheran, a powerful psionicist who awakens in a creepy sewer without her incredible powers. The game provides no logical explanation of why or how she got there. It’s up to the player to guide Kaet through a number of challenging dungeons. However, she is not alone as various creatures lurk the darkness along with Annalinnia the Blood Witch who’s trying to drive you mad.
Kaet will have to complete each dungeon within a certain time frame before the lights go out and she is driven mad by the darkness. Yet over the course of the game, players will acquire a number of Kaet’s powers that’ll light up the darkness, freeze enemies and so forth.
Jump Scare Bait At Its Finest
If you look at the Steam page you’ll notice glowing reviews saying “twitch streamers will love this game”. This is pretty much a game made for YouTubers and the like as this is perfect jump scare bait at its finest. It’s easy to immerse yourself into, with simple controls, easy objectives and a trial and error format.
The Graphics
Visually the game looks pretty good, with great attention to detail and lighting which captures a chilling atmosphere. The sound design is also pretty good with small cackles, menacing laughter, and sinister whispers filling the area around you. There’s a great deal of tension and the environment does a decent job at telling a story with scattered diary pages, cryptic messages scratched into the wall and murals that depict the horrifying things to come.
The Problems
So this sounds like a pretty solid game. In many ways it is but there are some issues which let it down. Now if you’re the type of player who hates getting killed off in one hit, then this might not be your cup of tea. I get that Kaet must Die is an extremely challenging game but having players killed in one hit doesn’t make it a fair challenge. This game takes the concept of trial and error too seriously and turns it into more of a grind.
Also, there’s very little outside the powers to make the level design interesting. They have often complicated mazes of death which don’t offer any exciting dynamics. It would’ve been more interesting to have objectives which don’t resort to tedious fetch quests or if the game allowed players to interact with the environment in a manner that protects Kaet, locks off enemies in certain areas or even kill them.
The difficulty is only a problem since it covers up the fact there’s very little depth to the gameplay. It’s a decent idea and one with a little more work could’ve been very entertaining. But as it stands, it’s a game for those annoying streamers to scream and shout at how great it is to get lost, grind to the end and have endless jump scares fill a majority of the game time.