Ever see a game and go ‘oh, that’s a big mood right there’? That was The Deadly Path for me as I browsed the Steam Next Fest Titles this last week. There are tons of good and interesting and mechanically sound games to sample from… but sometimes you just want something that has atmosphere, something unique and with an attitude that grabs your attention and pushes you into another world.
So, after watching the release trailer for The Deadly Path, after looking over the game with its garish art, booming narration, and absolutely wild premise, I knew this was the one for me to jump into. After an hour and change with the game, it is now on my wishlist and my shortlist to buy when it comes out. Let me explain why you might want to do the same.
When Elder Gods Are Your Boss
The concept for The Deadly Path is a fun one. You play as a custodian of a trapped elder gods/ancient force that isn’t known for being nice, and at some point in the past, you messed up. To make up for this, you are attempting to erect statues in their honor and give them tribute, which helps free them. Of course, if you mess up one more time… they aren’t exactly merciful deities.
There are only a few options unlocked for the demo, but just the custodians alone are evocative, grim, and can change around your play style.
When you start a run, you choose the deity you are trying to help, the level you are playing on, and a custodian. Each of these is going to mutate the run, with the deity changing what sort of buildings you might get and certain modifiers to how units function, the custodian giving you a different benefit to help you, and the level changing just how much you are trying to accomplish and the difficulty. For the sake of the demo, I only played the first level for the Rat-plague-god and then “The One Who Rusts”, but I can tell you all those little shifts stack up to make you change how you approach a new round.
Then, when you start a level and the music kicks in, the timers start counting down? All of those changes and challenges come at you fast.
A Dozen Timers, And They’re All Ticking Down To Doom
Two timers start immediately when you begin a game. The first is the most important: the upkeep timer up top. Every time that dings, if you don’t have enough meat, bones, and other resources, death is upon you. Naturally, there’s an ominous ticking noise as it gets close, especially if you are lacking the current supplies needed. The other timer is mostly positive: it’s from the barracks, giving you more basic skeleton-minions used in tasks. Of course, this will slowly increase the upkeep amount as your population rises, so… hooray?
Don't worry, the game doesn't start off this chaotic looking! It takes a few minutes to get this bad.
Other timers will quickly pop up on your screen, namely because everything runs off of them. Excavating tiles nearby is what lets you build new buildings, but costs meat and a few seconds. Building your basic supply stores, the carving spit and scavenger hut, let you slowly gain meat and bone, but have to be manned by your minions. On top of this, these locations only have so many resources before they collapse and turn to rubble, requiring you to do find new locations to build new buildings.
Did I mention that once every 10 cycles of upkeep, a ‘killing moon’ occurs? It’s only a temporary increase, thankfully, but it will greatly add to what’s needed to be given for upkeep, an each one gets worse… essentially, yet another timer counting down, making sure you are building fast enough to keep up with demand and before the round is over.
Time is not on your side in this game.
Thankfully, you do have a few things going for you. One is that you level up, and each level gives you one of three new building options, either giving you access to new buildings that give you access to new rooms or resources, or improvements to older ones to make them more efficient. There are also some options each deity gives you. For example, your plague-ridden demo god loves rats, and so you can recruit a new type of minion that’s better at getting bones. With careful management, you can get ahead of the upkeep curve and build towards victory.
Here is a run starting off well and still in control. All the upkeep markers up above have little green skulls. I'm building and growing, but not too fast, plenty of resources coming in.
What does victory mean in this game? First, you start off in an ‘age of darkness’, and a main goal during the demo games was to evolve into the ‘age of industry’ by lighting one of the beacons in your starting locations. This gives you access to more advanced buildings and resources, letting you what seems to be your main goal - erecting a statue or effigy for your deity to invoke their power.
The new era is interesting, getting you more options for dealing with upkeep, but it also means you have to juggle more resources to get that statue up and running. I can see how there might be more eras in the full game when it releases, but the demo gave me plenty to chew on with just these two eras. The game starts off frantic and it only gets worse as the upkeep rises and the sheer scale of management increases. There is always a timer somewhere nearby, and it always signals that you should be doing something. Seconds count in this game, and your little dark factory has a tight deadline.
Immaculate, Filthy Vibes
After the tutorial, I played a total of 5 games of The Deadly Path. The first game was roughly 6 minutes before in my rush to find new locations, I had used up all of my meat and missed upkeep. The second game was 9 minutes, and the third was 12 minutes, each game quickly letting different mechanics slip into my mind, getting up to the era change and then quickly losing.
Some level up options to choose between. It's safe to say that this game has an incredibly dark and wry sense of humor!
I won my first game on the first level with my fourth attempt, and the whole game took me about 15 minutes that absolutely flew by. By then, I had figured out how to more efficiently stack up bones and meat so I wasn’t always panicking with every upkeep cycle, but ran into new problems. I was earning gold and knowledge, but my more advanced resource buildings like bakehouses also required valuable gold, and my old ‘town center’ was now mostly rubble that I was building charnel houses to clear up to make room for more and more population buildings. The last few minutes were frantic, chaotic, and honestly, glorious.
Yes, you can pause the game with your spacebar, letting you look around the map and take a moment to breathe... but you can’t interact with anything without setting off the timer again. It’s a good thing too, because I think this game is elevated by its chosen then and sense of urgency. The music is wonderful, filled with sounds that feel gritty and frenetic, with some tracks kicking in as things become desperate. The art style is rough and grotesque, the colors of sickly skin and viscera drawing your eye to look at the details despite how you really, really should be focusing before the next upkeep is due.
By now, people are going to see the influences here, how it takes the ‘cards on a table with plenty of timers’ from the game style Cultist Simulator began and combines it with the theme and overall city-building style of the classic game Dungeon Keeper. What you end up with is a game all its own. It’s a lot more accessible than the purposefully opaque Cultist Simulator and Stacklands, presenting you with very clear cut goals. At the same time, it still requires a lot of experimentation, learning how the buildings interact. I lost my third game because I didn’t see my gold upkeep increasing from overuse of bakehouses until it was too late, but hell knows I won’t make that mistake again now.
Here's a screenshot from right before I beat the first level. You can see I'm absolutely out of control, with too many workers not working, me about to fail multiple upkeep threshholds... but I had figured out just enough to get to the statue objective in time.
All of this is just going to increase in scale. I played enough in the demo to unlock meta-currency points to get some new building options and a blessing to make some buildings more efficient, adding yet another wonderful way to customize your runs. When the full game comes out, I can see how figuring out which blessings to take with which custodian to create combos to beat the clock might become… obsessive. With games being so short and punchy, it could become all too easy to fall into the ‘just one more run’ mentality.
A Fun Game With A Big Mood
The Deadly Path has a great demo that shows off its game mechanics and core game loop incredibly well. It’s unique, has some great ideas, and really leans into its mood with art and music. One of the only things that gave me pause was my fifth run. I tried playing the first level as a new deity, “The One Who Rusts”... which I really liked, except that it introduced the concept of raiders. It’s a new complication, sending interlopers breaking into my base to break things and shut me down. I got destroyed by this, and the original demo tutorial hadn’t taught me how to deal with this new threat. At the same time, I didn’t try learning, because I already knew I am going to buy this game.
The Deadly Path demo is both fantastic and necessary. It’s one of those games that needs a demo, thanks to being such a unique mash up of genres, gameplay, and style. I absolutely understand why people might not be into it due to its relatively odd presentation and style of gameplay, but I also think it does a really good job of making this game style more accessible than others in its field. It also has the capability of sucking someone in, making players want to play one more run, earn just a little more meta currency to unlock a different upgrade, make them want to see if they can really manage to beat the timers the next time they play.
Quick shout out for the opening cutscene be a fully rhyming poem! Feels very 'deal with the devil' and cartoonishly evil in a great way.
That’s me. I’m that person. I’m worried I’m going to lose dozens of hours into this the same way some people play Balatro or Slay The Spire.
Regardless, the demo is still up on steam, and I highly recommend giving it a shot if it looks interesting to you at all. The game comes out on March 25th, and if it releases at $25 or under, I’ll own it the very same day.
