Don’t Die, Minerva! represents a significant change in direction from developers Xaviant, who are perhaps best known for their The Culling series. After the success and rapid decline of the first game, they released a sequel that took a few too many notes from PUBG while adding little original of its own, leading to the game being pulled from storefronts shortly after launch with the playerbase struggling to hit even triple digits.
A “rogue-lite action RPG”, then, is quite the difference for the team with Don’t Die, Minerva! launching into Steam Early Access and Xbox Game Preview from today, December 5th. Though it may look like a classic 90s Saturday morning cartoon with whimsical enemies and a child-like tone, it’s anything but a walk in the park.
You play as Minerva, an 11-year old who finds herself stranded at a haunted mansion with nothing but her flashlight and toys to assist her. Think Luigi’s Mansion meets something like Sleep Tight and you have the right kind of idea.
Death comes pretty quickly in Don’t Die, Minerva! with each failure sending you right back to the start of its procedurally generated levels. Permanent progression can be made by upgrading Essence, which takes the form of shards found environmentally or dropped by defeated ghoulies. These upgrades involve things like improved health, though it must be mentioned that I could never upgrade even with the right amount of Essence. Whether I was just missing something obvious or not, I couldn’t make Minerva’s deaths feel less deflating by helping myself out.
As someone who loves all things rogue, Don’t Die, Minerva! currently feels a little imbalanced and more contingent on loot RNG than a lot of its peers. One run, for instance, saw me collecting barely any loot to improve stats and powers with little opportunity to reclaim my lost health. Another run saw me pick up a small dragon toy while rapid-firing lightbulbs that also electrified enemies in chains — I breezed through the earlier levels as a result.
Combat itself is pretty interesting, the amount of light you being able to shoot being defined by your energy levels, which is initially not a factor at all. Energy regenerates over time but can also be reclaimed via pickups, which you’ll need when the screen gets filled with spinning enemies and all manner of challenging enemies. The difficulty spike between levels is rather pronounced, going from a simple stroll of strafing around enemies to needing to get behind their armour while making full use of the toys at your disposal.
I didn’t get to play around with many of Minerva’s stuffed defenders, but it’s plain to see how vital they are for success. A plush monkey, for instance, will lob bananas at any enemies that enter its area, while a cat will chase down ankles with the same kind of hell-fused anger any cat owners will recognise. The toys’ effectiveness is determined by their level, but they can also be equipped with special gems to give them elemental boosts and more power.
There’s quite the deep loot pool to Don’t Die, Minerva! with Minerva’s backpack, shoes, and more being able to customised with gems. Whether it’s extra movement speed (Minerva positively plods around normally, a little annoying when you decide to backtrack a bit) or additional health, the success of your run will be based a lot on what kind of gear you receive. This randomness, combined with the difficulty spikes, can cause quite a lot of frustration.
To Don’t Die, Minerva!’s credit, it’s in the earliest days of Early Access with balance changes and tweaks likely to come in the future. Though it’s packed with personality, there’s a slight stiffness to the action that could with polishing, as well as some constant frame hitches and bugs that need ironing it. My very first run didn’t load in properly, and trying to jump back into a run at a later date was foiled when I couldn’t access the elevator to start a level.
If you like rogue-ish games with a distinctive aesthetic and a few ideas of its own, Don’t Die, Minerva! is showing plenty of promise for the future. It looks like Xaviant’s gamble has a good chance of paying off for them, just as long as it’s given better support than their recent releases.
A Steam key was provided by PR for the purposes of this preview.
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