Creepy mansions that are filled to the brim with horrendous monsters have been a staple in the horror genre ever since the release of Resident Evil back on the Original PlayStation. The incident at the Spencer mansion kicked off a whole new experience with survival horror, and Indie games have done their best to capture the magic that fell in our laps many years ago.
You will die here tonight takes that same formula and gives it a twist that had me coming back for more, even after the credits rolled, while incorporating it into the rouge-lite elements into the story.
You will find yourself starting the game off in the shoes of Dr.Katherine Olsson who just transferred into the ARIES division, a group composed of six members who are tasked with infiltrating the Breckinridge estate. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned as the team is split up right at the start of their mission. As you make your way through the mansion, you will certainly watch as one of the squad members meets an untimely demise. In these instances, you will be forced to swap over to another character in order to uncover the mysteries tucked away in the eerie estate.
The team isn’t alone though as zombies roam the hall in search of their next victims and as the story unfolds, you will have to make tough decisions and fight hard to uncover the mystery here. If there is one thing that is for certain, though, it is the fact that you will die here tonight. *Insert thunderclap here*
Although it does a wonderful job grabbing your attention as a title, you will in fact watch as many of the characters will die during a run. Gameplay will have you running around the mansion in efforts to uncover the mysteries while fighting the zombies that stand between you and escape. If one of your characters die due to infection or in combat, you will be forced to move onto another character. If you are able to track down the body of the previous member, you can recover the items that you had on you at the time of death. Key items will stay in your inventory, so this is a side objective that you can take on in order to continue down the halls. The dead characters may return as one of the many zombies roaming the halls, and you will be forced to put them down once again. I really enjoyed this aspect of the game since I did have a few favorites that met an untimely demise and having to be the one to put them to rest added salt to the wound, especially since it was my mistakes that got them killed in the first place.
Enemies roam the halls and various traps will ensure that you make a rotation through the characters, so it’s best to not get too attached right away. Along the way, you will pick up items called K-Coins, that will allow you to continue your progress with the full cast available should you run out of lives. If you do not have any of these coins in your possession, then it is back to the beginning of the game. While this might sound off-putting to some, it is important to know that this is not an extremely long game. I was able to clock in a little over 4 hours or so in order to see the credits, and that includes the time spent redoing a lot of the same sections.
Combat is another interesting aspect to be found here, since it is so different from the games that inspired it. When you see an enemy on screen, you are able to ready your weapon and enter combat, but this doesn’t mean you will start firing right away. Instead, you are moved to a small arena in a first person view, where you will have to dispatch the enemy there in a fashion similar to House of the Dead.
With an arsenal of weapons available over the course of the game and limited ammo to go around, it is important to be aware of your load out before jumping into a fight. Going in unprepared and rushing to reload in the middle of a fight can get you killed relatively quickly. If the Zombies get hold of you, and you fail to escape their grip, then there is a chance you will be infected with the virus. This triggers a five-minute countdown that will end in your character turning into a zombie if you are unable to sprint back to the lab to get the antidote.
This was a level of stress added that made each combat encounter feel like there was weight behind it. Not once did I feel as if I was unstoppable or over prepared, since one wrong move could turn the tables quickly. For example, there are enemies dressed like maids that crawl around the ground like spiders and can close the distance pretty quickly. More often than not, I found myself dying in these encounters due to the fact my gun wasn’t loaded, and I wasn’t equipped to handle them at the moment. While there is a knife available, it is not something you want to rely on in the heat of combat since it requires the monsters to be up close and can prove to be ineffective against some of the bigger enemies.
When you aren’t scrambling around for ammo and health pickups, there are a multitude of puzzles that you will be tasked with solving in order to escape. Classic puzzles from Resident Evil, such as finding missing sheet music or clicking the buttons underneath paintings in the right order, make an appearance here. The computer in the laboratory will give you the current objective that you can check on from the map menu at any time during your run. As you make your way to this objective, you will come across different types of roadblocks that will require some deep thought and understanding of the area around you. I lost one of my characters due to the fact I didn’t examine a boulder located near the entrance I walked through. I assumed it was simple set dressing and soon found my character crushed by the boulder as it rampaged down the hallway. With a little more investigation, I would have seen that there were two entrances to the room with one being further away from the boulder, which would have kept my character alive. Moments like this are what makes each run feel different from the other, since there is always something to learn as well as traps to look out for.
The visuals here are crisp and every room oozes with atmosphere as quiet tunes echo through the halls as you maneuver the team from an isometric point of view. The camera is pulled down close enough to make every corner feel just as dangerous, since the zombies are able to respawn. The music that plays during the combat segments does a wonderful job of getting the blood rushing while distant zombies fade into view from the foggy background. The ones that are in your face are full of detail, and being grabbed by one will give you a wonderful up close shot of their designs. My play through was done on the Steam deck with headphones in at night and this only enhanced the experience as I was able to really get captured by what the game was offering. Every time I heard a door rattle or an off-putting sound in the background, I stopped in my tracks and rotated through my inventory to ensure everything was loaded up.
You will die here tonight is a wonderful example of what happens when a title looks to take the blueprints laid out by the games before them and expand in a way that is unexpected. I never would have guessed that I would enjoy Resident Evil with rouge-lite elements, but here we are. I found myself glued to the steam deck and had such a hard time putting the game down. Each run often had me thinking about the actions I took and what items I potentially overlooked, which in turn caused me to be more cautious on the following runs. This is definitely a game worth picking up if you are a fan of survival horror games and have been looking for one with a unique twist.