Death By Scrolling Turns the Afterlife Into a Roguelite Climb

Why Death By Scrolling Caught My Eye

Ron Gilbert making a fast-paced roguelite wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card. The guy who gave us Monkey Island and Thimbleweed Park now wants us sprinting up a vertically scrolling afterlife while the Grim Reaper nips at our heels? That combination of arcade intensity and sly humor is exactly the kind of swing I want to see right now. Death By Scrolling launched today on Steam (from Terrible Toybox and publisher MicroProse), and it’s already carving out a lane amid the Vampire Survivors wave by swapping chill arenas for pure, sweaty upward momentum.

Key Takeaways

• Vertical auto-scroll keeps you moving, turning every hesitation into a mistake – think “the floor is lava” as a core mechanic.
• The Reaper chase is a smart tension layer, like Spelunky’s ghost, pushing aggressive decision-making.
• Ron Gilbert’s humor shows up in side quests, vendors, and a tongue-in-cheek afterlife economy – not just flavor text.
• Leaderboards add a competitive hook; console versions for Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch are “soon,” but no dates yet.

Breaking Down the Scroll

At its core, Death By Scrolling is a run-based climb. The screen constantly rises. Fall behind and lava eats you; linger and the Reaper catches up. Multiple playable characters come with quirks and perks, and the combat sits in that sweet roguelite pocket: quick kills, quick deaths, and lots of micro-decisions about when to fight versus when to bolt. You scoop gold and gems, hit vendors for upgrades, and try to earn enough to pay the Ferryman – yes, your meta goal is literally saving up for the afterlife’s most overpriced river crossing.

What grabbed me after a few runs is how the scroll itself becomes the real designer. It compresses your reaction window and forces improvisation. The climbing rhythm feels closer to a platformer auto-scroller than the idle-adjacent arena roguelites dominating Steam. If you bounced off games where you kite mobs in a field for 20 minutes, this is the opposite: committed verticality, aggressive positioning, and constant route planning.

Ron Gilbert’s Twist: Jokes, Side Quests, and “Questionable Capitalism”

Gilbert’s fingerprints show up in the tone. Vendors crack jokes while upselling you mid-peril, the afterlife bureaucracy feels intentionally absurd, and side quests break up the sprint with optional objectives that reward curiosity. Side quests in a roguelite can be risky — nobody wants their flow clogged by errands — but here they act like dynamic detours. You decide: detour for a reward and risk the Reaper, or keep climbing and sacrifice potential power. That push-and-pull is classic roguelite design, dressed in Gilbert’s dry wit.

The big question is whether the humor stays snappy across dozens of runs. Thimbleweed Park showed Gilbert can land jokes without over-explaining them; if Death By Scrolling keeps that economy, the writing could carry it beyond novelty.

How It Fits in 2025’s Roguelite Meta

We’re deep into the post-Vampire Survivors era where “one more run” is practically a platform. Games that stand out now either lean into wild buildcraft or redefine pacing. Death By Scrolling goes for pacing. The constant upward pressure combined with the Reaper functions like an on-screen shot clock; it’s a cousin to Spelunky’s ghost and the timer tension of Downwell, except you’re climbing instead of diving. That alone changes how you evaluate upgrades: movement speed, vertical coverage, and control over space feel more valuable than slow-burn scaling.

Leaderboards are the smart competitive glue here. If the scoring system rewards risk — taking side quests, higher kill chains, tighter time — we’ll see speedrunners and score chasers carve up the routes fast. The caveat: leaderboards live or die by exploit control and clear rules. If cheesy stalling or AI traps can inflate scores, the meta gets stale. Fingers crossed for regular tuning passes.

What Gamers Need to Know at Launch

• Platform and date: Out now on Steam (PC), October 28, 2025. Consoles “soon” for Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch, but no firm timing yet.
• Structure: Multiple characters with distinct perks, vendors for mid-run upgrades, and a Ferryman end goal. Expect frequent early deaths while you learn the scroll speed and enemy patterns.
• Difficulty feel: The vertical pressure punishes indecision; movement upgrades often out-value raw damage early on. If you’re new, pick a balanced hero and buy mobility first.
• Side quests and humor: Optional challenges fold into the core loop without halting it, adding a narrative layer that most roguelites skip.
• Open questions: How deep is meta progression? Are leaderboards per-character and per-seed? Will console versions hit 60fps with crisp input on Switch? We’ll be watching.

A quick word on publisher and pedigree: MicroProse backing a Gilbert-led Terrible Toybox project is a fun clash of DNA — the sim legend’s revived label supporting a compact, joke-forward action roguelite. It signals confidence in quirky mid-scope ideas, and frankly, we need more of those between the $5 time-killers and the “please invest 200 hours” action epics.

Looking Ahead to Consoles

This design lives or dies on responsiveness, so console ports will need rock-solid frame pacing and low input latency. On Switch, 60fps is non-negotiable for a game that literally scrolls under your feet. Cross-platform leaderboards would be nice, but even platform-specific boards will keep the community healthy if updates land consistently. Price parity and save progression across platforms weren’t detailed — if you’re eyeing a double dip, wait for the fine print.

TL;DR

Death By Scrolling takes the roguelite grind and welds it to a relentless vertical auto-scroll, with the Grim Reaper as your personal deadline. It’s tense, funny, and distinct enough to matter in a crowded genre — as long as the leaderboards stay clean and the console ports keep the climb buttery smooth.