Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey Critic Reviews

Dance of Death is obviously made with a lot of love, and though it’s not perfect, it’s a solid point and click game with a modern twist.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey to anyone who wants to play a solid adventure game, but it's definitely worth getting when it's on sale.

Sir Lancelot and Morgana Le Fey teaming up with Mary Kelly to try and solve the Jack the Ripper murders and find Merlin in this click adventure. For anyone who loves history or to solve mysteries – give it a go!

Were it not for the lack of resources and having to push the game out, I can honestly say that Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey could have been a very good game, though not without the known issues of the tediously slow movement. All in all, if you want to play through an interesting story with a compelling core cast of characters, masterfully voice acted, then you could do a lot worse than Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey.

Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey has all the hallmarks of a well acted and mysterious adventure game but is held back terribly by a lack of polished design and a glut of technical shortcomings. Giving no hint of what can be interacted with until you've moved your painfully slow avatar close by leads to a lot of slow wandering around, while attempts at combat gameplay fall flat and take time and momentum from the building narrative.

The road to failure is paved with good intentions. The developers love for the literary version of Victorian London and the works of Marion Bradley are evident. Their ability to create a compelling narrative game however, is not. Technical limitations, scenes that are little more than alpha stage concept art, underdeveloped characters that fail to connect with players in any meaningful way and a complete absence of puzzles or emotionally resonant story beats, make Dance of Death very hard to recommend.

Dance of Death mixes pretty good ideas with great characters, but fails to execute those ideas. Having challenging puzzles is a must for adventure games, and unfortunately Dance of Death offers none, and has a long way ahead to become a solid adventure title.

When it sticks with its legendary Arthurian title characters, Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey has some charming moments, but the rest of this Victorian England hunt for Jack the Ripper is a tedious, barely interactive slog.

As a story it’s fine, but as a game I expect so much more than what’s on offer. Perhaps if the developers had invested in making an audiobook rather than a full-on videogame, they would have produced a better product.

If someone, someday, fixes the litany of errors that plague it, Dance of Death might become an enjoyable narrative adventure. Its release version is, unfortunately, completely and utterly broken.

Dance of Death: Du Lac and Fey is as awkward to play as it is to say. The interesting concepts can't save it from being a rather disappointing outing for the legendary characters.

While admirable in ambition, Du Lac and Fey's unfocussed story and maddening mechanics are frustrating at best, and unplayable at worst.

Evaluated solely by its presentation quality, Dance of Death: Du Lac & Fey is a solid enough point and click adventure, but it is sadly marred by technical issues and by a general lack of engaging puzzle solving. The mere concept of Arthurian characters hunting down Jack the Ripper is interesting in its own right, something the script reflects rather well, but the game design itself simply leaves too much to be desired.