Death Howl Review

The indie game landscape generally welcomes a clever blend of game genres; some of the most acclaimed games of 2025 like Blue Prince, BALL x PIT, Wheel World and more offer fresh experiences by merging mechanically-diverse genres. When done well, an inventive combination produces a truly unique and sublime gaming journey. But when the blend is unpolished or unbalanced, it can feel half-hearted at best and gimmicky at worst. I say all this to give context to my initial skepticism at Death Howl’s ambitious combination of souls-like structure and mood, along with a deck building and tactical grid-based combat system. Not only are these highly nuanced genres, but they’re ones that the gaming community tends to take very seriously. The Outer Zone took a big swing with their newest game. I’m very pleased to say, in spite of my early doubts, I think they hit their mark dead on.

In Death Howl, you play as Ro, a grieving mother who cannot accept the death of her young son, and travels into the spirit world on a quest to find his soul and bring him back with her. The minimalist pixel art hits you with haunting imagery, as Ro travels deeper through the lands of the dead. Death Howl doesn’t just play like a souls-like, it looks, sounds and feels like one. Landscapes and creatures alike are grotesque, but not in a revolting way that made me want to look away. Their grotesqueness is somber, muted and grounding, like the feeling at the end of a really good long cry session.

Death Howl in Action

The soundtrack echoes the minimalism of the visual style, providing a melancholic and discordant undercurrent to the experience. Combining ambient tones and synth notes, the music swells at poignant moments to wordlessly support the sorrow and determination within our main character. Now that we’ve reached the end of the year, many online conversations about the overall outcome of 2025 have circled around themes of loss and grief. In short, it’s been a very hard year for a lot of people. Death Howl feels like a perfect game for this moment in time. Ro’s journey embodies the experience of a grief so great, that traveling through hell itself feels like a lesser feat than overcoming the devastation within.

While the visual aesthetic, vibes and narrative scream “souls-like”, make no mistake, this is a game for deckbuilding sickos. If you love polishing, testing and perfecting your deck composition, you’ll find a rich landscape of proving grounds in Death Howl. Because it’s a souls-like, every time you heal at a Sacred Grove, all the enemy encounters will respawn. So you’ll replay the same encounters… a lot. At first I found that reality daunting, but I quickly began to appreciate the perspective it gave me. I could feel improvements in my deck’s effectiveness with each new card that I crafted. (Oh yeah, did I mention? There’s also crafting in this game.)

Deckbuilding perfection through trial and error

Personally, I don’t always feel the most confident in my ability to strategize putting together a deck. In Slay the Spire, for example, I often sense that there are synergies I’m not quite achieving or that my overall balance is off in ways that I’m not sure how to describe or fix. But through incrementally adding cards to my deck, and repeatedly taking on the same groups of antagonistic spirits, I developed a brand new feel for deck composition in Death Howl.

I also appreciate that the game forces you to experiment and learn a variety of strategies. As you traverse through the four broad regions of the game, you unlock new cards and skill trees belonging to each area. Death Howl forces you to learn and understand the core strategies of these different biomes by penalizing you for using cards native to other regions (by making them cost one mana point more). Again, I found this daunting at first, but learned to respect and appreciate new tactics that I don’t take to naturally. Like a mini death and rebirth, Death Howl led me through a struggle and I emerged as a better, wiser deck builder on the other side.

Death Howl doesn’t just play like a souls-like, it looks, sounds and feels like one. Landscapes and creatures alike are grotesque, but not in a revolting way that made me want to look away. Their grotesqueness is somber, muted and grounding, like the feeling at the end of a really good long cry session.

Nuance when necessary, softened with simplicity

For all its complexity in the blending of various genres, Death Howl features some key points of simplicity that I found helped to make the gameplay digestible. For one, Death Howls (the in-game name for souls collected from slain enemies) act as the one primary resource that is used for both card crafting and leveling up in the skill trees. While it forces players to choose between crafting new cards and unlocking new skills, at least I found it straightforward to only think about the one currency. Second, in the tactical grid-based, I was relieved to find that I didn’t need to worry about turn order or speed. Ro always takes her turn before the floor opens up to the rest of the creatures in the encounter. 

The one potential flaw in the concoction of genres, gameplay elements, and moods in Death Howl, is the general lack of direction given to the player. I think the visual communication of game elements is really effective, so fans of souls-likes, deckbuilders and tactical grid-based combat will quickly take to the flow of the gameplay. Players who aren’t intimately familiar with one or more of these genres might struggle a bit, though, due to the lack of tutorialization at the start of the game. 

Death Howl Trailer

Narratively, players also might find themselves a little lost at times. Death Howl takes its open-worldness very seriously, allowing players to travel in any direction and progress through the regions in any order. But it also asks players to put on their explorer’s hat and unearth the plot as they go along. Don’t come in expecting incremental quest checkpoints leading you through the main story. Instead, pick a direction and show up with an open mind to whatever you may find there.

I fear I have only scratched the surface of the many aspects that make Death Howl a unique and extremely compelling experience. The turn-based tactical combat is tight and rewarding. The dialogue is fascinating, and always left me wanting to explore more and learn more about the world and characters. It’s been a while since I could sit down with a game for five hours and not notice that any time had passed at all. I just might be completely obsessed with Death Howl and I hope many more players enjoy becoming obsessed with it too.

Emily was provided with a review key of Death Howl by 11 bit studios

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No Small Games is an indie game recap and review podcast brought to you by hosts Kate and Emily! They became friends while streaming on Twitch and bonded over their love of indie video games. In each episode of No Small Games, the two will discuss an indie game they both played independently. They’ll compare their experiences: the good, the bad, their most memorable moments of their playthroughs.

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