Hello friends. This is a Let’s Play video of “Death by Scrolling”. Welcome to Purgatory, inc. now under new management! Death by Scrolling is an action game where you kill enemies, collect gold, and avoid the Reaper long enough to pay the Ferrymanʼs exorbitant river-crossing fee to the afterlife.
There’s a particular brand of arcade panic-pleasure that hasn’t really had its moment since the days of feeding quarters into a Tower of Druaga cabinet, and Death by Scrolling has gone and bottled it. Out of Terrible Toybox NZ under the resurrected MicroProse banner, this is a vertically scrolling roguelite where Purgatory operates as a corporate hellscape under new management, the Reaper is forever two screens behind you, and the only way out is to climb fast enough to pay the Ferryman’s exorbitant toll before the fiery bottom of the screen eats your toes. Pick a character with their own bag of perks, hoover up gold and gems, juggle vendors and side quests between bosses, and pray your reflexes from 1989 still hold up. It is Downwell turned upside down and married to a Hades-style underworld payroll department, dressed in chunky pixel art and the kind of dark-comedy writing that made afterlife bureaucracy a genre worth caring about in the first place.
Developer: Terrible Toybox NZ
Publisher: MicroProse Software
Genre: Action, Top-Down, Dark Comedy, Pixel Graphics, Indie
Release Date: 28 Oct, 2025
Reviewed on: PC/Windows
Available on: PC/Windows, Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Link: Steam
Review copy was provided.
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