Death the Guitar Preview – Amp Up Your Speedruns

In Death the Guitar, you play as a living guitar who wants to take revenge on the humans who have killed its owner, who was the greatest rockstar of all time. I’ll give you a second to wishlist it on Steam. 

Coming from Japanese indie developer Toroya My Battery Is Fried, Death the Guitar features a simple, sort-of two-tone graphic style. Yet, it drips with style and creativity. It's a 2D platformer that asks you to clear room after room using the power of rock. 

After you complete a stage, you’re graded by your time and number of deaths, making this a pretty speedrun-friendly game. However, casual platformer fans will also find this game to be in tune with them.

Much like Hotline Miami or Katana Zero, Death the Guitar is a one-touch, one-kill sort of game. It raises the stakes, but it also pushes you into finding the most efficient route to clear a level. 

I played two separate preview builds over the summer, and so far, the controls are simple. You can jump and attack with a chord, and at some point, you can equip a special ability, like one that boosts you forward. 

The magic in the game is how your jump and chord affects the world around you. Throughout each level, there are amps. Jumping off an amp gives you more height and an electrified aura to hurt enemies.

Attacking, on the other hand, boosts you forward, destroying enemies and glass walls in your way (not to be confused with the special ability boost, which can be done any time as long as it’s ready).

Amps aren’t the only thing you can interact with, though. Attacking a switch attached to a pulley lets you lower or raise amps, acting both as a platform and a means to crush enemies. 

Additionally, certain kinds of ground are shockable, meaning if you hit it with your attack, a shockwave will travel across. It’s a useful way to kill enemies from afar or below. 

Overall, these different tools give you just enough options to figure out optimal strategies and paths for each room. As you run through a level, you’ll find all sorts of options to shred enemies with sound.

If you get hit once, you’re sent back to the start of the room, but it’s not as unforgiving as that sounds. These rooms are quick and breezy. After all, practice makes perfect, as any good rockstar knows. 

The latest demo I played at PAX West culminated with a boss fight that taught me which basic attack does the most damage (spoiler alert, it’s the forward dash off an amp). 

It felt like a classic boss in a 2D platformer like Sonic or Mega Man, where you have to dodge some telegraphed but quick attacks while finding time to get your own hits in. It’s the sort of thing where on your first try, it might take a couple lives. But if you practice it, you can probably do a no-hit sub-30 clear easy. 

I’m realizing I gravitated toward a lot of platformers this PAX West, but Death the Guitar made my heart pump the most. Maybe it was because I wanted to get on the time leaderboard on the show floor, or maybe it was the pressure of the people behind me. 

Either way, I’ll be looking forward to Death the Guitar’s eventual release, which is scheduled for some time in 2025. 

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TechRaptor previewed Death the Guitar at PAX West 2024.