You are a seemingly normal human who lives in a downtown apartment with your pet. Well, normal except for one thing: for whatever reason, disaster always seems to occur wherever you go, yet you always come out unscathed. However, everything changes when a mysterious chatting application appears on your laptop computer one day, along with messages from an unknown sender claiming to be a Grim Reaper who has come to take your soul. You are skeptical of his claims, leading you to propose a wager: he has seven days to claim your soul, or else you would get to have his. One thing that is for certain is that this self-proclaimed reaper is very easy to fluster, and thus a teasing courtship between the two of you ensues.
A Date With Death is a visual novel developed by Two And A Half Studios that released on December 7th, 2023 on itch.io and Steam. The base game is available for free on both platforms, with purchasable DLC that gives you more character customization options, more dialogue options, and an additional ending. During The Storyteller's Fest 2024, Two and a Half Studios announced an additional DLC pack
called A Date With Death: Beyond The Bet that will add alternative versions of Days 6 & 7 as well as three additional days' worth of story and two new endings.
A Date With Death contains examples of the following tropes:
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Your three possible guesses for where Grim lives are The Underworld, Heaven, and Australia.
- The Bet: The wager between the player character and Grim over whether or not he can claim your soul is the story's inciting incident.
- Beta Couple: The only other characters we hear from is the player character's next door neighbor and their partner. If you eavesdrop on them all seven days, you learn that you're neighbor's partner is also a grim reaper, and they're going through another loop in their Reincarnation Romance.
- Bland-Name Product:
- Grim learned about kaomoji from Yihoo Answers.
- Some other websites mentioned include MewTube, Twotter, and TokTik.
- Cannot Tell a Lie: As a Reaper, Grim is completely incapable of lying. As he interacts with you, he gets better at half-truths and verbal dodging.
- Character Customization: You can customize your player character's name, physical appearance, gender identity, pronouns, preferred terms of endearment, and favorite animalnote . You can even write a short bio for your character, if you so choose. Later on, you can mention what you do for a living during a conversation with Grim.
- Company Cross References: Some of the wallpapers for your computer's desktop and the ads in the sidebar of the chat application are from some of Two and a Half Studios' other games, including The Divine Speaker, Amelie, start;again, and The Inn Betweennote .
- Deathbringer the Adorable: Grim has an axolotl plushie named "Azrael" after The Angel of Death.
- Double-Meaning Title: Having "a date with death" usually refers to putting oneself in a dangerous situation, but here it also means literally dating an embodiment of death.
- Flowers of Romance: You mention to Grim on Day 5 that you wish you could have had a sweetheart who gave you flowers. That night, Grim (or rather, Casper) shows up floating by your fifth-story window with a bouquet of flowers in tow.
- Foreshadowing: The plant that you water each day ends up flowering over the span of a week, and your pet, after briefly getting ill, makes an immediate recovery after spending some time with you. These, along with your seeming immunity to death, are signs that you are an embodiment of Life itself.
- Hanging Up on the Grim Reaper: On day one, you can ignore and even delete the app Grim installed on your computer. Of course it doesn't stick.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: After teasing Grim mercilessly, he tries to see himself out of the conversation by saying his cat is on fire, his oven is on, his fridge is open, and his front door is unlocked.
- Land Down Under: If you guess that Grim resides in Australia, he suggests the idea of sending you there so that the native wildlife could do his job for him. Of course, seeing how Two and a Half Studios is based in Australia, this is the writing team poking fun at their own home country.
- Life/Death Juxtaposition: Casper really is a Grim Reaper, while the player character embodies Life.
- Multiple Endings: There are four endings in the main game, and an additional one via DLC.
- Paranormal Mundane Item: While the player character's laptop is perfectly normal, the Grim Reaper installs an app that allows him to text and video call you.
- Pineapple Ruins Pizza: On Night 4, you play a game of "twenty questions", with one of them being your opinion of pineapple on pizza. Grim likes it; whether you agree with him or not depends on which option you pick.
- Romantic Ribbing: This makes up a large portion of the player character's courtship with Grim, with your methods for doing so depending on which options you choose.
- Running Gag: If you choose the "soul baby" option on Day 1 when Grim asks what you plan to do with his soul if you win, you can bring it up multiple times throughout the playthrough from then on.
- Sliding Scale of Free Will vs. Fate: Normally, humans always die at a predetermined time. However, the player character has been able to avoid death since childhood, according to their diary entries. Depending on the route you choose, this is because the player character is either The Embodiment of Life or a new class of Reaper. Either way, you're not fully human.
- Urban Fantasy: Grim Reapers go around claiming souls, though humans are completely unaware of the existence.
- When Elders Attack: Grim got the flowers for his bouquet for "Sunshine" from the garden of an old lady who ended up giving chase and hitting him with her cane.
