Popular culture typically depicts Death as a cloaked dude with a scythe who comes to collect you like the world’s scariest schoolyard monitor when your time in the sunshine is all up. But Hasta la Muerte, a “survival platformer” for iOS, presents Death as a pretty upstanding guy who works overtime to protect souls in transit from the clutching claws of the damned. Hey! Death is pretty all right!
Popular culture typically depicts Death as a cloaked dude with a scythe who comes to collect you like the world’s scariest schoolyard monitor when your time in the sunshine is all up. But Hasta la Muerte, a “survival platformer” for iOS, presents Death as a pretty upstanding guy who works overtime to protect souls in transit from the clutching claws of the damned. Hey! Death is pretty all right!
Hasta la Muerte (which translates as “until death tears you apart”—tell your Spanish 101 teacher that you learned something new, go on) has already seen release on Xbox Live and Windows Phone 7. Now it’s the iPhone and iPad’s turn, because mortality’s end is inescapable and inevitable.
You play the game as a particularly cute rendition of Death (he has a belly button), and your job is to guide recently-deceased souls to their eternal rest. Unfortunately, Hell makes aggressive grabs for those souls, and Heaven is apparently too occupied with getting its horses saddled up for the Apocalypse. It’s up to Death to protect his new crop of souls from damnation.
Hasta la Muerte is a bit reminiscent of Pac-Man; the damned souls chase you, and you (as Death) must be wily and avoid them. Fortunately, beings called “Soulpets” can come to your aid and grant you speed, stealth, and other forms of protection.
Hasta la Muerte will be out for iOS on July 5th. Grab your iPad, take a deep breath, and make your peace with whatever deity you worship.
