PHOTO PROVIDED Pictured is a character named Fate, who is your boss, as well as his cat, “Fate’s Cat.”

PHOTO PROVIDED
Pictured is an example of one of the many customization options for your Grim.

The last thing many people want to do when they get home from their 9-5 is begin ANOTHER 9-5, but luckily time doesn’t work like that in this super fun story-rich simulation game.

“Death and Taxes” is a 2D narrative-based game where you assume the role of the Grim Reaper in an office setting. You’re tasked with deciding which humans (and on one memorable occasion, plants!) live or die.

It is a single-player game by Leene Kunnap, an Estonian indie game developer, and published through their company, Placeholder Gameworks, on Feb. 20, 2020.

“Death and Taxes” is similar to games such as “Papers, Please” or “Beholder” which have a lot of the same point-and-click choice-based elements.

I’ve played through this game a couple of times myself and I can confirm that the choices you make DO matter, unlike other choice-based games where the outcome is the same every time. There are a few different branching storylines with multiple endings (I’ve gotten four endings at the time of writing this, and according to a quick Google search there are around 30 to obtain thanks to a stat-based system).

The art style of this game is what had initially caught my eye — with the NPCs (non-player characters) bright and colorful against a stark gray background. The NPCs are fully voiced, and there’s a charming “make-your-own” element to the game where you can customize your own Grim Reaper.

The achievements make this game fun, too. Along with some secret ones that aren’t revealed until you achieve them, you can get achievements such as “Pineapple Hater” where you doom a character that likes pineapple on pizza, or “Let it RIP” where you spin a fidget spinner so fast it goes up in flames.

You can collect many different kinds of outfits and skins for your Grim Reaper, as well as fun items for your desk that help your gameplay down the road. These items all stay when you begin a new game + file.

The writing of the game is full of moral dilemmas, clever humor and depth that you really wouldn’t expect from a 2D point and click corporate job.

One of my favorite things about this game, though, is the replayability. It makes you WANT to go back through and try again, to see what choices affect the story and which ones are predictable. I haven’t discovered every secret just yet, but the lack of a time limit for each day allows for exploration.

The game challenges your expectations and the narrative flip-flops based on the choices you make. As the game so cleverly puts it, “Nothing is certain, except death and taxes.”

“Death and Taxes” is rated 9/10 on Steam and is available for $12.99 on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Mac, Windows and Linux.

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Breanna Hanley is a reporter for The Express.