Death’s Door is a superb Action-Adventure game made by a very small development team. It has 4 missable achievements but it can be done in one run if you keep an eye out for them. Completion time 14h+.
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 14h+
Estimated achievement difficulty: 7/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, I used this one, but it doesn’t flag “Baul Plart” as a missable achievement while it is
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, it has 4 missable achievements: Academy of Umbrellas, Baul Plart Hall Cop, Hot Pot & Meal for a King
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes, there is an achievement for only using the umbrella as a weapon (spells are allowed), swinging with another weapon ( even without hitting an enemy) already locks you out of this achievement
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
This game is so so good! It can be challenging and hard and has missable achievements but man it is superb! It is amazing what such a small development team has created. I love the artwork but next to that the game feels so good when playing, which is important if you make a challenging game.
You play as a crow who has the job to reap a soul, but something goes wrong and somebody steals that soul before you can bring it back to the HQ. Will you be able to get that soul back? The game is challenging and every little hit point you have you have to take care of because you can die very quickly. Gladly when you die you spawn at a point most of the time quite close and only have to kill a few enemies again. Most of the time while making progress through areas you can unlock shortcuts to make it easier to get back to where you were in the case you die.
About the achievements, this game has 4 missable achievements. 2 of those are about a specific way to damage a certain boss (Grandma & the Frog King). Reading those when you reach that boss might be a good idea as it is a very good strategy to kill those bosses. The third achievement has something to do with very cute creatures that will slowly start living in the HQ building. And the last one is the hardest achievement in this game, which is for beating the game while never swinging another weapon than the umbrella. You can find the umbrella in your HQ but if you swing your sword or any other weapon, even just in the air without hitting an enemy, the achievement will not unlock.
I decided to go for 2 different runs, first playing normally through the game and getting the other missable achievements and then a second time run with the umbrella. I was a bit scared of how hard that run would be and other guides say it is quite easy but I found it quite challenging. After I unlocked the fire spell I took a bit of time to go through a boss fight to upgrade the fire spell and after that it wasn’t too bad to get through the game. Looking back at it, I should have done it in one run, as it just takes some time to learn how to fight with spells but it looks like the easier way than using mainly melee.
Acid Nerve and Devolver Digital did a superb job with Death’s Door, I had an amazing time. Don’t be too scared for the missable and the hardcore achievements, it seems doable. I’m not a good gamer and I was able to do it.
This review was written on 25 February 2022, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 24 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.