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Death Collector

by Jordan Reyne

(based on 2 ratings)
2 reviews2 members have played this game. It's on 3 wishlists.

About the Story

Sever and preserve the tongues of the dying to steal their stories! Whether you gather their tales and memories for the greater good, or use what you learn to become one of the elite who decide what to call "History" is up to you.

Death Collector is a 300,000 word interactive fantasy novel by Jordan Reyne, where your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based—without graphics or sound effects—and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

As a Death Collector, your job is to visit the dying and harvest their stories by cutting out their tongues. Whether you seek fame, fortune, love, or renown, you'll find playing Death is more than just a job. Will you be able to stomach the gore-work that is cutting the tales of the dead from their mouths, or will you find out how the Ministry disposes of their workers?

•Play as male, female, or non-binary; gay, or straight.
•Learn to kill with style and professionalism, or to plunder information you were never meant to know.
•Join the elite ranks of the Board, or reveal the rot at the center of the system and lead a revolution.
•Get to know your cloak—a weird, organic entity that can render you invisible.

The wages of Death are yours for the taking!

Ratings and Reviews

5 star:
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4 star:
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3 star:
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2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Rating: based on 2 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 2
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The ending came outta nowhere, March 6, 2025

The premise is interesting. Your task here is to don your invisibility cloak and harvest the tongues of the dying, tongues which contain their memories. The story presents some interesting choices and conflicts throughout. However, this game also has substantial weaknesses.

The writing can get long-winded, and there are plenty of infodumps throughout which serve to expand on the game’s lore, but do so in a heavy-handed manner. There were choices to express interest in some characters, but I don’t know if there were actual elements of romances as I couldn’t find them.

The ending is sudden and really makes you go WHATT? Things were starting to tense up, and I was expecting to see more action. Instead, an ending screen just shows up out of nowhere.

There is a genuinely interesting concept and idea here, just that the execution is a miss.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Harvesting life-force-filled tongues for a secretive government org, February 9, 2021*
Related reviews: about 2 hours

This game has an awesome concept. You are a Death Collector. You have an invisibility cloak, pretend to be death to get people's tongues wagging before they die, then harvest the tongues which now contain that person's memories.

There's all sorts of creative worldbuilding, with different houses, abundant hidden secrets, etc. This is a long game with tons of tiny effects on the text due to your stats.

Unfortunately, there were several aspects of the game that I did not enjoy.

First, I was very confused by the stats. It's typical in choicescript games to have fluctuating personality traits represented by 'opposed stats' that add up to 50%, allowing the player to change over time. You also have skills that (generally) only go up, representing your wisdom over time.

In this game, your 'skills' are all things that seem more like personality traits: 'procedural', 'intuitive', 'cunning', and 'charming'.

This wouldn't be that bad, but they overlap in myriad ways with the opposed stats. For instance, if you decide to break rules to sneak into a room, are you being 'cunning', or not 'idealistic', or 'shameless', or 'maverick'?

If you talk kindly to someone who's dying, is that 'charming', 'honorable', 'empathetic', or 'idealistic'?

This makes it almost impossible to guess which choices affect which stat; similarly, it's hard to tell if you're adjusting a stat or testing a stat.

It's like playing a racing game that never explains which keys do what and sometimes randomizes them; it increases difficulty, but not in a rewarding way (for me).

The tone is very negative as well. It's basically choosing 'what kind of loser are you'. For instance, here are the options for one choice:

-I'm horrified this place is riddled with incompetence. Something must be done.
-I don't want to jump to conclusions. It might backfire.
-Pretend I disagree, so I can use the knowledge later for my own ends.
-I have no sympathy for whiners who blame their problems on others.

So you can do snooty, cowardly, sneaky, or haughty. I know some people enjoy playing as 'the bad boy/girl', and I've enjoyed doing that in other games, but it's not as fun when it's forced on you.

Finally, the narrative just kind of drops out at the end. At what feels like a couple of scenes before the climax, the game just stops with one page. It would be like if, in Empire Strikes Back, right after the scene where they meet Darth Vader in the 'dining room', they got on the Millenial Falcon and fly away, with the credits scrolling.

Despite my many troubles, the basic idea behind this game was great, and I encountered very few bugs/typos. The writing was interesting (it was several strong profanities, as a caution), and I thought the scenarios were individually compelling.

* This review was last edited on February 10, 2021
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This is version 1 of this page, edited by MathBrush on 9 February 2021 at 7:48pm. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page