Death end re;Quest

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Bring her out of a broken game alive. Most endings do not.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Switch
Stores: Steam
Price: Paid
Rated: Mostly Positive on Steam (76% of 1,421 reviews); Metacritic 71 on PS4, 73 on Switch
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard and mouse or controller (full controller support)
Made by: Compile Heart, Idea Factory
Released: 2018

On PlayStation: one of the PlayStation horror games.

Get it on Steam PlayStation Store (PS4)Nintendo eShop (Switch)

What frightens A programmer finds that his missing colleague Shina has been trapped for a year inside the VR game they were making, now overrun by bugs and glitched-out monsters, and she can only leave by reaching a perfect ending with a 1% chance of success. Wrong choices lead to bad endings that Steam's own notice describes as graphically gory scenes and vivid written accounts of characters' deaths.
Content: gore, graphic death scenes, violence, strong language, fanservice.

Death end re;Quest is a Compile Heart RPG that switches between visual-novel scenes in the real world and turn-based battles inside a bug-infested virtual game. A programmer tries to guide his trapped colleague to the one ending that frees her, while wrong choices end in gruesome Death Ends.

About Death end re;Quest

Death end re;Quest was made by Compile Heart and Idea Factory. It came out on PlayStation 4 in Japan in 2018 and in the West in February 2019, reached Steam in May 2019, and arrived on Nintendo Switch in 2021. It is played in English, Japanese or Traditional Chinese, with English and Japanese voices.

Arata Mizunashi, a game programmer, gets an email from Shina Ninomiya, a colleague who vanished nearly a year earlier. Together they had been building World's Odyssey, an immersive virtual world. Now he learns Shina has been stuck inside it the whole time, the game is infested with bugs, and some force stops him pulling her out. Her only way out is to finish the game and reach the perfect ending, which has a 1% chance of success.

You switch between two sides. In the real world, Arata investigates in visual-novel scenes; in the game world, Shina and the characters she meets explore dungeons and fight glitched monsters in turn-based battles, where you can even switch the battle's genre. Choices matter, and the wrong ones end the story in a Death End. Steam's notice warns these range from graphically gory scenes to vivid textual descriptions of deaths, and reviewers found them gruesome and, at times, spooky.

The play between the bad endings is often light, with bright anime characters and some fanservice. It suits JRPG and visual novel players who want a darker mystery with real stakes on every choice.

How to play Death end re;Quest

Read the real-world chapters as Arata, and investigate what is happening to the game.
Explore the dungeons of World's Odyssey as Shina and her companions.
Fight glitched monsters in turn-based battles, using skills and the bugs on the field.
Choose carefully at story decisions; a wrong one can lead to a Death End.
Keep going toward the one ending that frees Shina.

Screenshots

Death end re;Quest screenshot: a horned girl with a glowing scythe faces dark beasts across a field of red bug tiles in a turn-based battle

Death end re;Quest screenshot: the floating world of World's Odyssey with a volcano, castles and dark clouds

Tips

Save before every major choice so a Death End does not cost you hours.
If you only want the main story, critics note the game can show you which choices keep it on track.
Watch the field bugs in battle; they can help or hurt your party.

Questions

Is Death end re;Quest a horror game?

It is a JRPG with a horror story: its many bad endings are gory and graphic, and reviewers call it gruesome and at times spooky, though moment-to-moment play is lighter.

How many endings does it have?

There is a main path toward freeing Shina and, as reviewers stress, a great many bad endings that wrong choices lead to.

What platforms is Death end re;Quest on?

PC (Steam), PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

Is there a sequel?

Yes, Death end re;Quest 2, and a later entry, Death end re;Quest: Code Z.