Kaet Must Die! aims to be a rather unique trial and error survival horror game. Those who love titles like Slender: The Arrival, will find the gameplay format of Kaet Must Die! enjoyable and interesting. Filled with spooky themes and suspense thanks to an ever-looming clock, Kaet Must Die! is solid game for enthusiasts of the indie horror game scene. Think you can survive against an all-powerful witch who threatens to kill you? If you’re up for a challenge than you’re probably going to enjoy Kaet Must Die!

Similar to most survival horror/adventure games, Kaet Must Die! tests your mettle in more ways than one. Players must navigate dangerous mazes to find clues on how to escape each area. However, this task won’t be easy thanks to beasts and traps that can kill you in one hit! Players will need to utilize their various psychic powers as Kaetheran-- Kaet Must Die!’s protagonist—and escape with their mental state intact. Death will be a thing to experience over and over again in Kaet Must Die! However, it will be up to you to learn from each failure and gain the knowledge of how to survive your second time through. Welcome to a living nightmare in Kaet Must Die!

For reasons unknown, Kaetheran—a strong psionicist—has found herself trapped in a rather strange sewer. On top of that, Kaetheran has lost her powers completely! In order to survive her strange situation, Kaetheran must gather clues from fallen men and women like her and escape this place before a powerful witch called Annalinnia appears. Kaetheran needs to hurry and regain her powers as well as solve the mysteries of this situation she’s in as time ticks on both the Annalinnia’s appearance and Kaetheran’s sanity…Can Kaetheran survive and escape while countless others have failed?

Ever since the days of the appearance of Slenderman and the various games created from that story, there has been a lot of indie horror games that seemed to arise from nowhere. Most of these are pretty terrible and yet, some are actually quite enjoyable. Recently, developer Strength in Numbers released Kaet Must Die! which seems to incorporate a lot of ideals found in your usual horror adventure game. However, does Kaet Must Die! join the ranks of titles like Outlast or Slender: The
Arrival or does it follow the route of being just another meh horror game? Well, we here at Honey’s Anime got our chance to play Kaet Must Die! and have some thoughts after putting some time into it. Let us now share those thoughts in our review of Kaet Must Die! for the PC.

Kaet Must Die! follows a very simple survival horror/adventure premise. Players assume the role of Kaetheran—Kaet for short—and navigate various levels finding clues in order to escape alive. Stopping you are a slew of various obstacles such as a timer—that once it hits zero you get killed by Annalinnia—and creatures in the form of zombies, goblin-like beasts and other killers. If any creature hits you or the timer does run out, it’s game over for Kaet and the player. You’ll have to then restart the level and try again no matter how much progress you made. Now here’s the million-dollar question: How do you survive and how do you beat a level?

For the first question, you’ll have to use Kaet’s powers and your own smarts to survive. Kaet has various powers that unlock as you progress like her first power being a light orb that can cause the goblin-like beasts to flee from you and also light up an area. Later, Kaet even gains a power to stun enemies in their tracks which can help avoid some situations when used correctly. These powers aren’t unlimited though as you’ll need to find items in the environment such as mushrooms for the light and blood for the stun magic. We also mentioned your own smarts because the bigger element of Kaet Must Die! is trying to navigate these weird levels and survive the threats against you.

In order to beat a level, players must find clues scattered around and solve puzzles with them. Without spoiling the levels and their clues—which makes Kaet Must Die! more enjoyable—we’ll say that for the first level, objects must be found to create a portal to beat that specific level. Outside of searching for clues, you will need to avoid the various traps around you by using sound, memory and ironically, death. The sound and memory are obvious—hear creepy laughter and you know a goblin beast is around and remember locations of importance—but the death element might strike you strange. Dying in Kaet Must Die! will be a reoccurring theme but every death is a new chance of learning from said death. If you know a pathway contains a dead end and will cause you to be surrounded by baddies or waste precious time, just remember next time, your chances for survival will increase. Kaet Must Die! almost mirrors Dark Souls in that death is meant to be a learning tool more than just a punishment and we actually appreciate that gameplay element to be honest.

With the gameplay portion of our review done for Kaet Must Die!, let us now discuss the graphics and sound. Sound wise, Kaet Must Die! works quite well. The creepy sounds, laughter and spooky levels work incredibly well and make Kaet Must Die! feel truly terrifying. The graphics however, aren’t in the same category. While the environments for Kaet Must Die! look pretty darn good, the art and enemy design feels pretty lackluster. The menu alone might turn some away from Kaet Must Die! as it looks rushed and doesn’t scream quality title. The enemies also won’t inflict fear in you as they don’t seem scary. While the jumpscares will work because they fly at your screen, it won’t be because the creatures look terrifying. As we said though, the environments—which really matter most—work well enough and that makes Kaet Must Die! passable in terms of graphics and sound.

Kaet Must Die! might not wow you if you judge it by its rather strange cover/art design, but if you ignore that and dive into this horror title, you might be quite surprised. The adventures of Kaetheran is rather interesting and fun. While Kaet Must Die! isn’t perfect and might now wow people with its somewhat simplistic gameplay style, for what it’s worth there is some enjoyment to be had here and we won’t complain about that. You will die—a lot—in Kaet Must Die! but for those who endure the constant cycle of death, you begin to understand that death is quite avoidable and usually it’s your lack of attention that will cause the death most of the time. Yes, often it feels like Kaet Must Die! might rely too much on trial and error gameplay mechanics but that in turn makes you want to learn where a trap is to avoid it and equally learn more about the map to prepare for your next run. That’s why we think if you love games like Slender: The Arrival, you’ll most likely enjoy Kaet Must Die!

Kaet Must Die! is a rather fun game that has a lot of elements that work well for a survival horror but misses the mark in some areas as well. Ultimately though, we enjoyed our time trying to solve puzzles, soaking up the interesting scattered narrative and dying but trying to figure out ways to avoid death next time. However, the art design won’t wow many and the jumpscares grow really annoying after the first hour. Kaet Must Die! will appeal to a very specific type of horror gamer enthusiast—namely the ones who love games that are pretty solid for streaming purposes—but others might feel it might be a game worth skipping. We here at Honey’s Anime recommend Kaet Must Die! though as we think it’s a fun horror game with a lot of charm hidden behind some rather questionable designs. Are you thinking of picking up Kaet Must Die! and playing it for yourself? Tell us your thoughts on Kaet Must Die! using the comments section down below. Remember to keep returning to our hive here at Honey’s Anime for all your game review and article needs!