Postmortem: One Must Die (Extended Cut)

Postmortem: One Must Die (Extended Cut) is an older game from 2013. It's a venerable 11 years old at the time of this review, but feels more like a game 20 years old.

This is a 2D isometric "adventute" mystery game where you are a "grim reaper" sent to collect a soul, except of course you get to decide who dies at an old-timey party. There's a puddle worth of factionism and intrigue. Talk to the guests, decide who to knock off, then you get a little "post mortem" (I guess that's the purpose behind the choice of title) that explains the ramifications of your decision... and frankly it's boring and badly done.

There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.

We're here to play games, not read through hours of garbage intersituals. My gaming rig is not a Kindle.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.

The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, and it's hard to say if this is due to the age of the assets used, if it's a deliberate attempt for the game to look bad/retro on purpose, or if the assets are just, well, terrible looking. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game in 2024, such poor quality 2D graphics in the 3D era just aren't good enough, whether it's a deliberate design fault on behalf of the developer or they just couldn't manage to do any better, this is a compromise gamers shouldn't have to put up with.

The developers didn't design the game for gaming PCs, as such the best display resolution is set at or below 720p, a very low resolution that was introduced in 1998 and became obsolete when 1080p HD entered the mainstream in 2006. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?

Postmortem: One Must Die (Extended Cut) is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

one level. maybe 15 minutes worth of gameplay if you skip the meat of the game to see the alternative endings. I was expecting an actual game with a handful of scenarios.

I mean...if it's on sale for $.40, and you have literally nothing else to spend it on....i guess buy this game. otherwise...don't.

I liked the idea of the game. I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, I'll never know if I would have or not. The game won't display text properly. After moving my character from spawn, the text becomes jumbled and broken, showing random letters instead of sentences. I tried to push on despite this, but I found out quickly that text was pretty fucking important in this game. So, in essense, I cannot play this game. It's a shame. I got it on a sale, so I didn't waste that much money, but still.

Summary

Pros

Cons

This game had a lot of potential, but ends up having a terrible case of tell-don't-show, with long pages of dense text that aren't particularly interesting. Postermortem is also incredibly short, even after multiple playthroughs, and with no investment in the characters or story there's just nothing to recommend it.

Well...

Like the reviews say, it is a short one.
Definitely not worth the full price, but on a 75% sale for 1,25 euros, I don't really regret getting it.

Basically you are one of the many reapers, sent to an event to collect a soul.
You're introduced to the case by a secretary, who you can't flirt more than say: "Tell me about you"
She then asks whether you'd like to be seen as a male or female by the mortals, but I'm not really sure if it makes any difference.

The guests are the same and the conversation may end up in the same way despite your dialogue choices.
It feels kind of clumsy when you play it again and pick different choices, only to see them answer the same way as they did during last time.

You CAN just go up to someone and kill them there, but the purpose is to learn about the guests, and then make a choice on who you will collect.
The annoying thing is that if you want to see the results in the same situation, only with a different person dead, you have to do everything again in the same way.
Talk to same people, pick the same dialogue options, etc. etc.
Also, I've only played it 2 times, and both times, the person you kill seems to talk the same way, even if it is a different person...

I think that one thing that could've made this far better would have been options to better interact with people, and maybe add a few things that switch by random each time you play.

Ultimately, the controls feel a tad bit clumsy, and the game does seem a bit laggy time to time.
That may be just my own PC, though.

But, in the end, I can not recommend the game for the full price.
For 1,25euros though, sure, it gave me some amusement. This could work on a phone, be a reaper and kill a person each time you go take a shit.
But when at computer, nah, I don't think I'll end up playing this that often.

A really interesting consept pulled off rather well. You're death and you've got a job to do, a simple enough concept. Lots of reading, so if you're not into reading, this isn't for you. My one complaint is I would really like to see more levels, as there is only the one. If they expanded this a bit more, added a few levels, this game would be way better then it already is.

This is hardly what I would call a game, it is more of a glorfided demo. You basically just read and make ONE decision. No interactivity. The concept has a lot of promise, but charging people for this "game" is almost criminal.

Extended?

This game is one level that lasts 30 minutes at most *if* you poke at *everything*. I like the concept and quality of content, but most demo's and tutorials are longer than this. I picked this up in a bundle, but I would have been furious had a paid full retail for 30 minute game.

Game thrusts you unceremonially into a dinner party and tells you to kill one of the six guests you can speak to. You can read a few newspaper clippings strewn about and go into very superficial conversations with the guests, mainly concerened with a conservative/liberal conflict in their imaginary country. Conversations are often ended abruptly and guests would stop speaking to you afterwards, leaving you with very little to go on. Once you've made a choice, an epilogue is shown, presenting the results of your choice and any influences you may have had on the guests due to dialogue options.

Overall, it feels incomplete and the story and characters are uninteresting and the resolution is very anticlimactic. Seeing one resolution is enough as it gives you a fair idea of what would've happened if you had done things differently. Game is short, took me a bit over an hour and I did go into all dialogue options and actions available.

For a game that handles choices and their consequences better, check The Novelist.

It's difficult for me to write a negative review of this game because it tries very hard to be the kind of game that I enjoy: interesting and original. The following are reasons why this game fell short of that mark.

1. Very poor sprite animations. Distractingly hideous.
2. An abundance of grammatical and spelling errors.
3. Meaningless conversation choices.
4. Lazy variation of endings, despite being the selling point of this game.

A few good surprises were had though.

1. The ending (nothing more than a collection of news clippings) is altered by more than your choice of victim. Your conversations with the dinner guests can convince them to do certain things which affect the ending.
2. The history of the world is well realized.
3. No hand holding. You are thrown into the world and left to experiment. The game doesn't make it particularly obvious how to get the ending you want. Killing the guy you dislike the most might actually result in a bigger "villain" rising to power. Going to places you're not supposed to might get you in trouble.
4. You're free to make tough moral decisions. All of the characters are likable and hatable in the same breath. The game doesn't bludgeon you with a preachy message, nor does it bore you with a simple tale of good guy vs. bad guy.

At its total, this game would look great on the drawing board. There are many areas of this game that make the player excited with the possibilities, but it doesn't feel like a completed game. As a free flash game (or demo) this game would be acceptable, but at 7 dollars I can't recommend this to anyone, even the most hardcore of text-based fans.

I would rate this game as 8/10

It has a great concept as long as you do not mind a bit of reading and a short game. The game really demonstrates that the smallest actions can have very large repercussions and that our choices really can make a difference.

If you do not mind reading you should keep an eye on this.

Anyone who loves imersive story and interesting dialog trees with plesant music and lovely art, as well as a non binary system of consiquences based on almost every desision you make should pick up this game, esspecialy while it's on sale. Well worth your money, I had a blast with my first two play throughs, and plan to enjoy it for a good while longer. five out of seven (sorry for any spelling errors)

This is a strange title, because at times it's almost more of a detective/choose-your-own-adventure book than a game. Yes, you play it, but the majority of that game play involves walking around, reading notes and papers, making decisions, referring to your journal, and talking to people.

In fact, I should point out that you'll be doing a LOT of talking. If you normally dislike lots of dialogue (which is mostly silent, so no voice actors beyond a word or two every so often) then don't get this game. Fortunately, you don't have to remember every little detail as vitally important information is automatically written down in your journal.

The story is you're a novice reaper (okay, get "Don't Fear the Reaper" out of your system before you continue reading) on your first assignment. You're told that ONE person must die at the gala you're attending. Admittedly, it's a very small gala, since there's only about six people there.

What happens next is you read various notes and newspapers (and even open some safes and unlock doors, if you manage to get the right keys) and talk to each of the six individuals there. Every single person will have varying views on the shakey political situation going on and have something to say -- both bad and good -- about other people there.

None of the attendees are "innocent" in that each one has their own faults. One man is very sexist and thinks women shouldn't enter the workforce, while at the same time wants more rights for male workers. Likewise, one woman has some very feminist views (as in equality, not male bashing), but is extremely anti-immigrant and wants "those people" out of her country. There's also poor vs rich issues and arguments about whether violence means are justified to change current conditions.

In other words, everything discussed in the game is a reflection of real life, both past and present. What's interesting about that is you have the chance to agree with them and further encourage their current point of view or argue a counterpoint, sometimes changing their mind.

Once you make your decision about who to kill, you'll see the reports detailing the aftermath. All of your actions -- who you decided to kill and what you discussed with the survivors -- play a role in shaping the future social and political climate.

There are some negative points, however. The game uses a somewhat primitive sprite-based 2D isometric graphical style, which for some reason or another, randomly experiences slowdown while walking. The resolutions offered are also limited.

There's virtually no mouse support other than clicking on menu buttons, so almost everything is controlled via the keyboard. That wouldn't be so bad if the controls didn't feel clunky.

There are numerous grammar and spelling issues in the dialogue. The font used is also small and the letters appear squished together, which makes reading sometimes a chore. That's a huge black mark against the game considering you'll spend more time reading than not. I will admit that I played this on a laptop with a screen resolution of 1366x768, so the font may be easier to read with larger screens and higher resolutions.

As far as I know, there's no way to save your game. Granted, the game isn't terribly long, but if you want to see all the outcomes, you'll have to talk to everyone each time you play and some dialogue trees can be very long. So while you could immediately go and kill different people right from the start, you wouldn't have affected anything (other than murdering someone) without talking to everyone first.

Post Mortem: One Must Die (Extended Cut) is currently $6.99 USD on Steam or offered at varying prices on the developer's website. The regular version (which lacks numerous extras, including a new character) is also available for FREE by the developer at http://postmortemgame.com/download/

Let me start by saying I actually do recommend you to play this game. It's execution and premise are pretty damn great. However, it remains an underdeveloped idea that is not worth five Euros in my opinion. The idea of saving, ruining or keeping the status quo of a country torn by two opposing sides of an industrial revolution is a great idea, but the game offers but one scenario. One that can be replayed a lot of times, but still, it's but one scenario in what could have been a very deep and amazing political simulator.

On their site, you can get the game for free, or pay what you want. I like supporting Indie developers, but the Steam price is way too steep. So I'd suggest getting this from their site and paying around 1,50, which I feel is a fair price for a nicely executed idea that needs quite a bit more depth to justify paying more.

This is the extended cut? Trying all possible combinations MIGHT net you an hour of gameplay with 5-20 minutes being more realistic. Three or four levels of equivalent detail - a point where the game stands up solidly - with cumulative effects of your choices could be interesting. As is, however? Not worth it.

Potentially a good game, but possibly one of the shortest I have ever played with little to no replay value what so ever.
It seems like a fantastic 'first level' but for an extended cut/release? I was left dissapointed. The universe drew me in but the game left me wanting more, It was like watching a film and just as the protaganist is introduced the credits roll. Save your money on this one in hopes for a more final release but keep your eye out.

Appraoched as a single scenario with some replayability, then this game is fun. Those expecting more than 30 minutes of play time per playthrough will be disappointed. It's very interesting, very unique and very well written. The dialogue trees are important, unlike most adventure games. Go into each conversation with a goal: find out who they are, what impact they are currently having on the crisis and what impact they may have in the future. Try and convince them to change their bigoted ways and if you fail: add them to your list!

If this is the extended cut, I have a hard time visualizing what the length of the initial release was. For all of the promise the premise of investigating several characters and picking one to die carried, the execution including perhaps 6 rooms and less than 10 characters left me feeling as if there was much more possibility to be played with and explored than is offered here.

It held my attention while I played it, and I was very interested to see how my decisions might influence the outcome of the game, but ultimately I don't feel as if I got enough play time out of the title for it to have been worth the dollar value I paid for it.

This is a nifty adventure game for those that like to read. Unfortunately it can be very short or as long as you want it to be, this is because there is essentially one "map" and literally you only get to kill one person.

The concept behind it all is that you talk to everyone and pick the choices you want. Those choices will then affect the ending you gain. Essentially you then play through again and again, each time picking different choices and the person you "claim"

Overall, there should be more to this game as I was hoping there would be something after the first level but literally the game can last 2 minutes (if you randomly pick someone and don't care about the choices or how they affect the story) or hours long if you decide to explore and go deeper trying to find every combination and choice

Not worth the price IMO. There is only one "act" (one level of the game to play through) which took me 30 minutes when I spoke to every person in the room and went into a couple of side rooms. Each conversation with each NPC can become a very long, very boring dialogue you cannot get out of until you go through the whole thing. Conversations would have been more interesting if they were much shorter and not so useless. I typically learned everything I wanted to know early on in each conversation.

There is nothing in the game to prevent you from choosing a random target to kill, so you can easily pay $7.00 for less than one minute of gameplay.

Overall, this game was an interesting concept which was stuffed with uninteresting monologues and only one act. Not worth the money paid at all.