Nobody Wants to Die review – the roaring (23)20s

Nobody Wants to Die is a game that feels like an attack on the way gaming is headed. While AAA titles continue to balloon in size, becoming ever longer, pricier and more unwieldy, Nobody Wants to Die aims to trim the fat, remove some of the bells and whistles, and create a short game, but one that is jam-packed with meaningful content from start to finish. And I’m delighted to say that it pulls it off in style.

Nobody Wants to Die takes place in a dystopian 2329 New York City. Technology has progressed to the point where consciousness can be transferred into a new body after death. The rich live on forever while the poor rot away in run-down apartment buildings, required by law to keep their bodies fit and healthy in case they ever need to be requisitioned. 

You take the role of James Karra. Fresh from an accident, you’ve recently taken up residence in your latest body, one riddled with asthma and scoliosis – you get what you can afford. Once you’re assigned your new (and very much reluctant) partner, Sara, you’re assigned to check out the murder of one of the city’s most powerful men, instructed to mark it down as an accident to sweep it under the rug. 

Unsurprisingly, after nearly a century on the force, bouncing between bodies, Karra isn’t the type to let these things slide and begins working the case off the books. As the case unfolds, it becomes clear that the plot goes far beyond the man whose body you initially investigated, with more murders taking place and a mysterious stranger who seems to be one step ahead of you at every turn.

It’s a simple premise, but a good one at that. As you piece together elements of each crime scene, slowly working out what happened to the victims, more and more questions arise. It’s a fairly short game, meaning the pacing is always spot on, feeding you just enough information to make you think you’ve solved it before dangling something new in front of you. During your investigations, you’ll also be given some choices to make, grappling with the warped morality of Karra’s mind, with each choice determining how the story will unfold.

But as good as the plot of the game is, where the game does fall short somewhat is in uncovering that story. The central mechanic of the game is a handy little trinket called a Reconstructor. Using this, you can ‘rewind’ time in certain parts of the crime scene, uncovering bit by bit exactly how everything went down. After rewinding to a specific point in time, you’ll use an array of gadgets like a UV lamp and X-Ray scanner to analyse different clues. 

The Reconstructor mechanic is almost reminiscent of Return of the Obra Dinn, but unlike in Obra Dinn, there is often very little, if anything, for you to actually solve for yourself. Finding clues is typically a simple matter of rewinding to the point in time marked in gold on your Reconstructor, looking around a bit for something that looks interesting, interacting with it, and repeating until you’ve finished the level. There’s even a hint mode that will mark out exactly what you’re meant to be looking for to make things easier.

It’s not riveting gameplay, and I often found the way the different mechanics worked to be somewhat clunky. This is only exacerbated by the sections requiring you to bring all your evidence together. You’ll have each piece of evidence laid out in front of you like a chessboard and need to drop one piece of evidence onto another to develop your understanding of the case. In theory, this sounds perfectly fine, but in practice, the clues you’re given are often so vague that they seemingly apply to two, three, or even four different pieces of evidence, making it feel less like solving a puzzle and more like brute forcing your way through.

But no matter how slow I found the investigation gameplay, it never managed to put too much of a dampener on my experience, because the world of Nobody Wants to Die is absolutely exceptional. Instead of the typical futurist aesthetics we’re used to from games set this far in the future, Nobody Wants to Die opts to combine the advanced technology of 2329 with the art deco stylings of the roaring 20s, and somehow pulls it off with aplomb. Indeed, the worldbuilding is so expertly interwoven that the idea of time-controlling wristbands and consciousness transfers existing side-by-side with zeppelins just makes sense.

Not only is the design of the world spectacular, but the way the lore of the world is built up throughout the game is, too. As you make your way through the game, tidbits of exposition are dropped organically to help you understand the world you’re living in. The more you learn about the world, about the corrupt and despicable nature of the body economy, and the polarity between the urine soaked hovels you and the world’s poor live in and the eminent luxury of the elites, the more invested you become in Karra and his story.

From the trailers alone, you would think it was safe to assume that, aside from the futuristic setting, Nobody Wants to Die was a sleek and introspective homage to film noir greats like Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, but that’s only a half-truth. While the world shares many of the aesthetics of 1930s New York, the people are very much regular people, grinding day to day to survive in this dreary, dystopian world. 

Everyone, that is, except for James Karra, whose cadence and vocabulary would seem as ordinary coming out of Humphrey Bogart’s mouth as his own. If you head into this game expecting a darkly serious thriller, his voice acting could easily come off as annoying. But if you don’t take it too seriously, it’s a blast to experience this bizarre world through Karra’s eyes. The developers’ love of the genre is clear to see. Nobody who hated noirs could make a game that so earnestly encapsulates and parodies the tropes of the genre in equal measure.

Of course, Nobody Wants to Die is not a AAA title, and the more you dig into it, the more you’ll realise that. It’s a short game, maybe around six hours for a regular playthrough. You also very rarely interact with another character in person. But if these nitpicks are enough to turn you off this game then you will be missing out. In fact, considering the lower budget, the fact that Critical Hit Games have managed to make something so well-paced, well-voice acted and visually stunning is a huge achievement.

Nobody Wants to Die is a solid detective game with a gripping story and a spectacular world dripping in the ironically kitschy stylings of classic film noir. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you shouldn’t either. The puzzles are almost all perfunctory, rarely requiring you to do any actual solving, while the awkward investigation mechanics at times make for frustrating gameplay, but these are never enough to detract from a short, perfectly paced, and genuinely enjoyable thriller.