Not a terrible VN hybrid, I honestly admire what it aspires to do with its different mechanics but they simply don't culminate in an interesting game.
The structure of Death Mark is composed of chapters with large areas to navigate and pick for key items, similar to Ace Attorney. This is where Death Mark particularly excels, being where it executes its style of horror quite well, with an excellent soundtrack and subtle corner-of-the-eye flourishes that unnerve better than any dough-brained jumpscare does. In between these sections are frankly terrible "puzzles" that typically amount to using key items on obvious spots, and bits where you have to choose the options in a dialogue tree that won't lead to instant death. The writing is basic and repetitious as fuck so the VN parts drag, characters literally never talk to one another, or even say anything particularly unique or interesting when taken on missions. Dotted throughout are these insane CGs of dying half-naked girls that look like they're from a completely different game entirely???

Death Mark wastes too much of your time. I'm not sure why it feels the need to completely deflate its atmosphere by forcing the player to meet very narrow item/character requirements that funnel you into asinine deaths and restarts, only for chapters to end in a hilarious turn-based combat puzzle thing. Curious enough to see if the sequel improves on these things, but I'm not hopeful!

Reviewed on Aug 07, 2021


4 Comments


It's a BIT better, but has many of the same problems. It's such a shame, because the art style is absolute king shit.

2 years ago

Honestly yeah I love the artstyle, especially in the way the characters are rendered making them look all doll-like.

2 years ago

I honestly think the sequel is leagues better, also not a big fan of Death Mark but was very wowed by how much of an improvement the sequel was in pretty much every category (the multiple choice segments making more sense/not requiring you to know japanese specific stuff, encounters are much more forgiving with checkpoints between scenarios). Definitely worth a playthrough if you liked the horror Ace Attorney gameplay that I also like describing this game with
I am playing the sequel now and i have a feeling I will like it less than death mark