Rating of
1.5/5
Flies Will Love It
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/07/15
“Death and the Fly” is a game commissioned by the once-great Western PC publisher, Interplay, from an Indie development team consisting of two individuals from Poland. There is actually very little information about the game available online, simply because it was such an incredible commercial failure. Between Interplay’s reanimated corpse being just as evil as any undead represented in fiction, and the incredible pressure it put on these unknown devs, the final product was destined to be terrible… and it is.
Presentation
There are two reasons I own “Death and the Fly” on Steam. First and foremost, it was 90% off, so I paid 99 cents for it. Second, the screens show off an incredible art direction that looks a bit like Tim Burton and Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam got together over a few pints and banged out a game concept. The soundtrack is also a fitting match for the art style.
The art direction is, depressingly, the only good part of “Death and the Fly.” Technically, even the graphics are completely botched due to an insane decision by someone to lock the game’s resolution at a miniscule 640x480 pixels, thus making it appear as a tiny, illegible box in the middle of my 55” 1080p TV screen. It almost seems as if “Death and the Fly” was originally intended to be a Game Boy Advance game, but was then shuffled onto Steam, since nobody in 2011 – when the game released – would be running a monitor or TV at such a low resolution. Besides the resolution issue, “Death and the Fly” uses an excessively difficult-to-read font that makes the menus and tiny textboxes an exercise in eye strain. And the menus themselves are all mouse-driven, despite the fact that the game does, at least, include native Xinput controller support.
Story
There is really nothing in the way of narrative to “Death and the Fly,” despite the interesting premise of the Grim Reaper and a giant Fly hanging out together. There are hint boxes scattered throughout the game’s stages that mostly just attempt to explain the unintuitive gameplay, while occasionally throwing out one-off lines about the playable duo. Platformers typically don’t have to have great stories, but “Death and the Fly” doesn’t even try.
Gameplay
“Death and the Fly” is a puzzle 2D platformer that seems to take some slight inspiration from a title from Interplay’s glorious Golden Age, “The Lost Vikings.” Instead of three characters striving to reach the exit in a large number of stages, “Death and the Fly” has two characters that must reach the exit in 9 different stages… Well, I presume the game has 9 different stages from looking at the game assets in the SteamApps folder, as I only managed to struggle through two stages before succumbing to boredom and frustration.
The two characters each have certain skills. Death can push heavy blocks, but is otherwise devoid of offensive skills and must walk on solid surfaces, whereas the Fly can fly and spit little blobs of mucous as a form of attack. Both characters can manipulate switches, as well. However, the stage designs aren’t particularly interesting, and mostly involve moving one character until they reach a switch, then moving the other character to the door that said switch temporarily opens.
Death and the Fly can also use expendable items that can be picked up in stages or purchased from a shop on the map between stages using gold coins found within stages. These consumables are not particularly intuitive, and it’s very easy to screw-up a puzzle or die, only to find that the game hasn’t returned the consumables the player used to reach a certain point, forcing the grinding of currency.
It is possible to save within each stage, but the default save button in unintuitively mapped to the DOWN button, which causes the player to accidentally save every time Death needs to climb down a ladder. Saves are also a limited commodity, relying on a gauge that fills as Death or the Fly ‘act’ within a stage.
The basic concept of “Death and the Fly” isn’t inherently bad, but the execution just fails in every way. In addition to the problems I’ve already mentioned, the game suffers from ridiculously bad hit detection both against and from enemies, the controls can be sluggish and unresponsive, and the game randomly suffers from major speedup and slowdown spikes.
Overall
When it comes to Interplay games, it has become clear that anything published after the company’s 2006 bankruptcy is pure garbage. “Death and the Fly” was published in 2011, making it just another data point on the diagram of Interplay’s fall from grace. It could have been a fun, quirky little game if it wasn’t intentionally gimped, impossible to actually see, and seemingly devoid of any quality control. Even at 99 cents, this steaming pile of offal is a waste of money.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: 0/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 1.5/5
