Death and Taxes

Released

Release Date: February 20, 2020

Death and Taxes is an independent adventure game, which is a joke about death. We play the role of the Reaper and make decisions about life and death of different kinds of creatures.

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[1:04] Death and Taxes - PlayStation Launch Trailer

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Plot
Mechanics
Technical aspects

Death and Taxes is an independent simulator in which we play the role of Death and fulfill its duties, deciding the fate of ordinary mortals. The game was developed and released by the Estonian studio Placeholder Gameworks. Some of its have worked on such productions as Disco Elysium and Fable series.

Plot

The proverb says that in life you can be sure of two things - death and taxes. When the second is dependent on many people, so in case of death everything is on the shoulders of one being. Have you ever wondered what it is like to perform the duties that every living creature leads to sadness? If not, then you have the opportunity to become The Lord of Life and Death, sit at his desk and start looking through a stack of papers with resumes of candidates. On the basis of these you have to answer whether a person can live on or whether it is time for him to leave the earthly plane.

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Mechanics

Death and Taxes is a humorous puzzle adventure game in which our choices are of great importance and can lead to one of many endings. If you have played Papers, Please, the game mechanics will not be unfamiliar to you. In the game, we play as the Death. The game starts with the creation of the character. For this purpose we get a character minicreator in which we can choose how The Death will present. Then we start our first day of paperwork. For most of the game, we look at our desk, where we can find things necessary to perform our duties. Including documents containing detailed information about candidates; a coin to help in moments of indecision, a magic ball to check the balance of the world we have a direct influence on or our smartphone, where we can find a summary of our actions.

We will also often visit our boss (yes, even Death has to face problems), from whom we get special guidelines and new tasks, praise and reprimands, but we will also take part in special events where we have to choose one of several dialogue options.

All work and no play, although Death already does and the money we earn can be used for a variety of things that make the work easier. From time to time, in the local dead man's assortment, we find new image change options, so that our naked skull can be decorated with the mask of a plague doctor or Great Old One.