Buzz or Die Review – A Stylish Death Game With Too Little Bite

Death row inmates compete to make viral videos of each other’s lives in a twisted game show. Step into the role of a participant and design video thumbnails so that you and your partner can overcome each competing team and survive until the end.

As a fan of several series with the “death game” concept, I was immediately intrigued by the new twist on the concept in Buzz or Die. In a future where androids are modeled after death row inmates and used as slaves, you and several other convicts are made to participate in a special game show. If you win, you’ll be pardoned and get to make one wish. If you lose, however, you’ll be the model for a new line of androids. You and your partner, a cult leader conman, must face off against the other pairs and come out on top. How do you win? By creating a video about your opponents that goes viral.

First, you play through an investigation phase where you enter your opponents’ mental landscapes to learn more about them. While the majority of the game is presented in a visual novel format, investigations use point-and-click style gameplay instead, where you click each clue to collect it as evidence. This is where you learn the most about the other characters, seeing glimpses of key moments from their pasts that led to their crimes. Each clue is clearly marked, and once you’ve clicked them all, you automatically move to the next area, which is a little disappointing. I had hoped for some freedom in investigating, but this game takes a more linear approach.

After you’ve gathered the clues, it’s time to make your video. To be precise, your job is to make the thumbnail. You pick the style of video you want, such as Clickbait or Video Essay, and then you select visual elements to match it. Creating these thumbnails is fun, since you choose what elements to include, as well as resize and rotate them. Once you’re satisfied, you can submit the thumbnail, after which point the game show’s audience votes on which video is the best. However, it’s unclear how much the thumbnails actually affect the outcome, if they even affect it at all. When I finished my playthrough, I reloaded an old save and intentionally made a bad thumbnail, but the vote outcome remained the same.

Buzz or Die has a striking visual style, with great character sprites in the visual novel sections and a nice black-and-white aesthetic for the investigations. Although I ran into a few technical issues, like the game initially launching in Japanese and occasionally lagging, they weren’t enough to disrupt my playthrough. The biggest flaw, however, is that it’s simply too short. I liked the characters in Buzz or Die, especially once I learned their backstories during the investigations, but it would have felt much more impactful if I’d spent more time with them first. On top of that, the macabre commercialism of death row inmates making viral videos about each other’s crimes to avoid being turned into a marketable product is a great theme, but one that also would have benefited from a longer story.