It's not as if we're going to be starved of quality content for 2021 and even into 2022, especially from some of the bigger name devs and publishers out there, but it's often important for us to look at some of the seemingly 'smaller' offerings out there, that are anything but small in stature or vision. Case in point: Death's Door by developer Acid Nerve.

We took the game through its preview paces in hands-on form recently, and put together both a written preview, and a video preview for your reading or viewing convenience. But if you need a shiny few lines of enticement, here you go:

Except you won’t take flight, as our little crow whom we’ll come to know as Beakface later, instead walks, runs and rolls about the meticulously-crafted game-world, swinging their sword, and firing off their arrows in what is largely a Zelda-inspired action-adventure title you could thoroughly have been forgiven for thinking is actually a roguelike or lite. Thankfully, however, it isn’t and harkens back to a more tried and tested genre in the aforementioned Nintendo favourite.

And I say “thankfully”, because while that genre is full of fantastic entrants, from the outset Death’s Door -- absolutely a game of character progression -- feels like something less grindy and random, and more permanent; artfully-designed worlds that belie the need for modular, procedural levels and random monster placements. There’s also no permadeath loop here given the contextual nature of the narrative, which in turn keeps the game on an ever-moving arc, albeit one fixed in place.

Click here for our full Death's Door hands-on preview feature.