History VideoGame / LetItDie

An always-online, free-to-play HackAndSlash ActionRPG developed by Creator/GrasshopperManufacture and published by [=GungHo=] Online Entertainment, directed by Hideyuki Shin (''VideoGame/KillerIsDead''). The game was released for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 in December 3, 2016. The game would later receive a release on PC in September 26, 2018.

* WeirdScience: The Death Drive 128 is a weird 3-tier deck, the games appear to come in vinyl record sleeves, even though the games are so tiny they look like they'd work on a UsefulNotes/PlayStationVita. The console needs no TV or monitor: instead, games are displayed by a scarab beetle that can project photo-realistic holograms.

* CycleOfRevenge: In the Death Metro, anybody who raids you can show up in the "revenge" tab, allowing you to raid them back at any time. However, nothing stops them from showing back up after you've got your revenge and doing it again. Maybe not intentional, but with the name of the game it may possibly be AnAesop, telling you to take the grudge and [[TitleDrop Let It Die]]. [[WarForFunAndProfit In practice, strong teams frequently pick fights to induce hatred and start a revenge-fueled war, because the rewards for waging war include vast riches and the coveted Death Metals, paid by the Yotsuyama Corporation for being such good (blood)sports]].

* AndShowItToYou: The iron claw's goretastic.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: If you die, your enemies will ignore your corpse and return to their previous positions, so if you choose to revive, you won't have them standing over your newly-resurrected self to kill it again. If you're in a position where that's not possible (either in an enclosed space or during a boss fight), you will be temporarily cloaked once you come back from the dead, allowing you to subdue your surrounding foes unseen or possibly retreat if able.

A sequel, ''Deathverse: Let it Die'', was announced on October 2021.

* NintendoHard: The name of the game is to die, try again, die, try again, rinse and repeat as you (hopefully) get a bit further each time. Bad luck and items can screw a run, higher Rank foes will utterly ''[[CurbstompBattle slaughter]]'' you, and players can constantly raid your stuff all the time which diminishes your resources and assets for the long-term. And the boss fights? [[UpToEleven Good luck alone won't suffice.]]

* BreatherLevel: {{Invoked}}. Once you reach the surface the first area will have few enemies (sometimes one Hater) and plenty of new healing creatures like crabs and slugs who can heal up to 300 HP. Giving the DifficultySpike waiting for you it's appreciated. While you may be tempted to think such, Floors 21 and 31 are most assuredly not this.

* DifficultySpike: Screamers in the second area have actual weapons like butterfly knives and assault rifles, instead of the relatively weak and impractical [=D.O.D.=] weapons in the first area. Haters also used to scale to your current Fighter tier and level progress, making their difficulty jump tremendously until you gain better gear.
** Amusingly, the third area steps back a few ages and has the majority of enemies outfitted with medieval arms such as swords, axes, and spears, yet manages to be an even larger difficulty spike (most armors you can obtain in the first two area are very weak against slashing damage, and the healing items are even more scarce). And then, even beyond that, is the 4th area that returns to the modern age with makeshift sports equipment-type weapons, like bowling balls tied into lacrosse nets and baseball pitching machines and is the largest difficulty spike in the game!
** The floors past the 40th are made to be even worse than before, as you can only carry 5 to seven items before going there, [[EliteMooks Haters and Hunters are the only enemies in standard zones]], and all escalators are restricted so you cannot retreat the way you came. This section is a test of endurance, where you must manage to get to an exit or a resupply room before your equipment inevitably wears out.

** The War Ensemble type armor have good projectile resistance, mostly bullets, but are weak to slashing attacks since they are mostly bulletproof vests and body armor not made to stop knives. The Candle Wolf type armors are replica knight and samurai sets, and while good against slashing damage, are vulnerable to bullets and other projectiles since the bullets simply pierce through the plate. The M.I.L.K armors are strong against blunt attacks since they are made for contact sports, and the D.O.D have resistance against elements since they are customized work uniforms for fireman or electricians.

** Capturing other players' fighters in the Tokyo Death Metro. First, you'll need to have a slot in your freezer open to bring them back. Next, you have to pray to the RNG that a defeated Fighter in your target's Waiting Room will actually be put in a stunned state once defeated, rather than being too dead to bring back. And THEN you have to survive a very, very long time without having the Fighter taken right back out of your hands by one of the many, many players who will see your name specifically come up in the 'Rescue' menu of the TDM. And since you can't choose the model, category, or tier of who you capture, you may as well just make a new Fighter from scratch and max out his level yourself to save both your time and patience. You also gain [=SPLithium=] by minutes but the 'Rescue' menu is the most busy so keeping a Fighter for forty eight hours is mostly for the challenge.

** Jackals' equipment; they used to be the highest-tier equipment, but tier four equipment has the same or better stats and requires less materials to farm.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Uncle Death...kinda. While he had absolutely nothing to do with the Earth Rage earthquake and the construction of the Tower of Barbs, he was quick to commandeer the Tower for his own purposes. He was the one who started the rumor about there being a treasure at the top, and is using the [=SPLithium=] generated from the Hater deaths in the Tower to somehow fuel a ColonyDrop to crash the Moon into the Earth. He's also the owner of Yotsuyama Enterprises and the creator of the Death Drive 128... however once you reach the top of the tower he admits he's bored of his world destroying plan and would rather just watch you play on his new Death Drive XXX system.]]
* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: The Tower of Barbs is an example that's absolutely gigantic. It's a chaotic mishmash of random buildings that were smashed together during the "Earth Rage" earthquake, with its total height equivalent to a 30-story skyscraper with very high ceilings. It's also said to be growing by itself, and the connections between floors are randomly generated every time you leave the Waiting Room.
** The tower ''does'' grow twice, thanks to updates. Floors 42-50 simply ''appeared'' one day. Once you make it to floor 50, floors 51-''351'' grow right on top of the tower, leading to Uncle Death crying a single tear.
* BloodSport: The Muscle International League of Killers, or M.I.L.K., are an in-universe blood sport created by the fourth Don of the Tower. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome They came under vast scrutiny and were investigated]], but their founder was killed during a press conference. After their disbandment, their modified sports gear and training grounds found their way to the 30th-40th floors of the tower.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The Cthulhu-like giant monster that's shrouded in shadows in the background during the opening cutscene explaining the Tower of Barbs turns out to be [[spoiler: the "Final Boss". However, Uncle Death just kills it in one hit for you in a cutscene because he got bored. Which is just as well, since the normal game mechanics wouldn't have made it possible to fight an enemy that frigging huge anyway.]]

* LuckBasedMission: A lot of action and element limit quest relies either on you having Death Medals to spare or hoping another player doesn't send you a near unkillable hunter. A one item in the death bag is impossible if a hunter with end game armor corners you. This has been patched by having floor based Haters instead of being based on Fighter level, but even then the higher floor can be an issue.

** Your Fighters all have weird ports in them (20 in all) and have a strange glowing bar running across their chest a few inches under their collar bones. Those ports are for some kind of interface, as they have tubes/cables hooked up to them whenever they're on the Fighter Depo train, in the Fighter Freezer, or leveling up via Mingo Head. Then when they turn into Haters, their skin turns grey and they get these weird growths on them.

** Enemies have a random chance at exploding into fungus patches when they die, rather than dissolve into puddles of blood. You can even harvest mushrooms from the resulting fungus patch, which causes them to disintegrate into spores.
** The Three Shocks of Terror, the sub-bosses within the Tower of Barbs, are abominations created by fusing several Fighters into a singular entity. One of the sub-bosses, CO-EN, is a Hulkish creature with several body parts jutting from his massive body. Another, JIN-Die, has a ChestBlaster that fires the severed heads of her previous victims and GOTO-9 has his head upside down, an intestinal tongue and walks on all fours (Uncle Death comments it barely look human).
** U-10 is an abomination with no known past, the body of a desiccated corpse, a giant solar-panel bulb growing out of her back, a stinger tail, and the voice of a psychopathic woman-child.

* BreakableWeapons: Melee weapons and armor will break from overuse or damage, forcing you to fight with your hands if necessary. Firearms can break, but the ammo usually runs out before they can, so they stick around in your inventory. Thankfully, you can just sell the cracked weapons and empty guns to Kommodore Suzuki for a bit of pocket change.

** Your Kill Coin and [=SPLithium=] banks both start at a 40k capacity each. They can be upgraded up to 50 times each.

** Skill Master: Has more Skill Decal slots than other classes.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: While most of what guards can do in Tokyo Death Metro is well within what a player can, if you see them using a move you can't seem to do just level up that weapon's proficiency, they will occasionally pull cheap tricks that you cannot do, such as guarding at times that it's impossible for a human to do, like when getting up from a strong attack or at the very end of a hit. The A.I. does limit itself on how much it does it, and never seems to go in for a hit after it does, although due to the strict time limit on TDM, 3:00 to kill all guards and wreck the place, this can produce just as much frustration as if they had simply gotten a cheap kill. They also can hit up to 6 times time with a cleaver saber while even perfectly timed a player can only do three and it drains stamina.

* CycleOfRevenge: In the Death Metro, anybody who raids you can show up in the "revenge" tab, allowing you to raid them back at any time. However, nothing stops them from showing back up after you've got your revenge and doing it again. Maybe not intentional, but with the name of the game it may possibly be AnAesop, telling you to take the grudge and [[TitleDrop Let It Die]].

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: Played straight early on, but then subverted the further one goes in the game. At first, the price to retrieve the Fighter is proportional to what you can gain at the level they died on. If you can't afford the modest fee to get it retrieved, you can recover the Fighter by going and killing it with no issues if the fallen Fighter had nothing of value left on it. After the 20th floor however, the game steps up the retrieval price significantly, and going any higher will inevitably need a lot of farming to replace lost equipment multiple times, since the Screamers will have elemental weapons that can break your gear faster. A death becomes a major setback in the highest levels where the cost is 250k, which even for people who've beaten the game is hard to get, especially when your best Fighter is unavailable due to being a Hater in one of the most deadly areas in the game.

* DifficultySpike: Screamers in the second area have actual weapons like butterfly knives and assault rifles, instead of the relatively weak [=D.O.D.=] weapons in the first area. Haters also used to scale to your current Fighter tier and level progress, making their difficulty jump tremendously until you gain better gear.

** The floors past the 40th are made to be even worse than before, as you can only carry 5 to seven items before going there, [[EliteMooks Haters and Hunters are the only enemies]] with post-end game weapons, and all escalators are restricted so you cannot retreat the way you came. This section is a test of endurance, where you must manage to get to an exit or a resupply room before your equipment inevitably wears out.

* EvilTowerOfOminousness: The Tower of Barbs, which stretches 1686 feet into the sky and looks to be built from ruined buildings and uprooted subway tunnel sections. The layout of the floors inside it actively change and the tower is rumored to be building itself taller.

* PistolWhipping: Any gun will have a mastery level unlock that allows you to hit with gun, the gun will break rapidly if you do that and is mostly a desperation move.

** Tokyo Death Metro allows players to launch raids on others' waiting rooms to steal gold, [=SPLithium=], and prisoners, fighting the other player's own Fighters (if they placed any on guard).

* PostApocalypticGasmask: It can look like just an aesthetic choice by the game's art style at first, but it's [[JustifiedTrope absolutely necessary]]. While some mushrooms in the Tower are harmless, others continuously release poisonous spores into the atmosphere, making the air in the Tower rife with incredibly toxic gases. It's why everyone (except Uncle Death and the Premium Elevator Attendant) owns a gas mask and constantly wears it inside the Tower of Barbs.
* PostEndGameContent: The campaign ends on floor 41, "CHOJO". After that, there's "TENGOKU", which is comprised of random prior levels, is seemingly ''infinite'', and most importantly, ''every single'' ''{{Mook}}'' ''is a Hater''. [[spoiler:If the player beats floor 350, the "letter" the player receives on floor 351 implies the Death Drive 128 has been on so long that it's started to overheat, as it's nothing but a jumbled mess of random characters. (Uncle Death trying to cool the console with ''dry ice'' on floor 301 certainly doesn't help.) The run immediately ends there, with the "letter" functioning as a sort of KillScreen.]]

* {{Roguelike}}: Floors with certain randomness to the layout, the same is said about enemies and dying is a {{Permadeath}}. In fact, Uncle Death outright calls it a Roguelike the first time you wake up in Hater Arcade. While this is generally downplayed and more of an RPG, the higher floors (41-351) resemble a roguelike; limited starting equipment, randomly selected floors, randomized enemies and items, few safe havens, and a general risk-versus-reward factor as you have to choose between

* AwesomeButImpractical: Dropkicks. They look amazing and powerful, but being off your target by even a slight margin will leave you in an incredibly vulnerable position.

** Jackal's equipment, at first they were good but tier four equipment has the same or better stats and requires less materials to farm.
* BackStab: More like Back ''Drop''. If you can sneak up on a Screamer or Hater, you ''suplex them'' for major damage.

* BadassInANiceSuit: The Jackals X,V, and Z are "collection agents" for the Dons and are as badass as a person would be if they lived in the Tower for years.

* BloodSport: MILK equipment in the 30+ floors are modified sports equipment and arena that used for ultraviolent gladiatorial game.

** Your Fighters all have weird ports in them (20 in all) and have a strange glowing bar running across their chest a few inches under their collar bones. Those ports are for some kind of interface, as they have tubes/cables hooked up to them whenever they're on the Fighter Depo train, in the Fighter Freezer, or leveling up via Mingo Head. Then when they turn into Haters, their skin turns gray and they get these weird growths on them.
** The animals you can catch to restore your health have mushrooms growing off of them. You can take the mushrooms if you stomp them.
** Enemies have a random chance at exploding into fungus patches when they die, rather than dissolve into puddles of blood. You can even harvest mushrooms from the resulting fungus patch, should they appear.

** Snails emit poisonous gas when in contact with a surface, which used with the Poison Eater Decal can restore a fighter to full health an unlimited amount of times and be thrown at most non-boss enemies to drain their health as they stand or pass through the poison cloud...but actually [[DeathOfAThousandCuts killing an enemy]] and restoring to full health take a considerable amount of time to resolve, especially at higher levels.

** Your storage box has a starting capacity of 30 items, and can be upgraded via the Direct Hell Insurance menu to a max capacity of 500 items.

** The bathroom/prison starts out with 1 cell, but can be upgraded to a max of 6 cells.

** All-rounder: The JackOfAllStats that can level all their stats evenly. Occasionally, one stat will have a higher cap that the others.

** Attacker: Attack specialist, stat focus on Dexterity and Attack. Max health is rather low, as a trade-off.

** Lucky Star: Fate specialist, stat focus on Luck. Earns more money and loot through exploration and expeditions.

** Momoko Yamada, now known as the Mushroom Magistrate, who's been driven insane by the mushrooms she's consumed over the years and regards them with a nearly fanatical religious fervor. She's even set up shop in the Tower of Barbs, not for the treasure rumored to be at the top, but just for all the weird varieties of mushrooms that grow within it.

* ColorCodedItemTiers: Special brand-name metals required for more advanced R&D follow thusly according to hierarchy: Blue, Green, Black, and Red. However, some equipment may skip Black all together or require more than one color of metal to be upgraded.

* {{Cooldown}}: There's two cooldown timers for the Choku-Funsha. One for R&D, when you're creating/upgrading equipment that you've submitted the blueprints for. The second one is for after you buy a piece of equipment, likely there to keep you from easily amassing a load of brand new equipment. Upgrading your Waiting Room via the TDM terminal also has cooldown timers until the upgrades are complete. But all these timers can be expedited by spending Death Medals. The only timer that ''can't'' be expedited is the reprogramming countdown for captured Fighters.

* CycleOfRevenge: In the Death Metro, anybody who raids you can show up in the "revenge" tab, allowing you to raid them back at any time. However nothing stops them from showing back up after you've got your revenge and doing it again. Maybe not intentional, but with the name of the game it may possibly be AnAesop, telling you to take the grudge and [[TitleDrop Let It Die]].

** Amusingly, the third area steps back a few ages and has the majority of enemies outfitted with medieval arms such as swords, axes, and spears, yet manages to be an even larger difficulty spike (most armors you can obtain in the first two area are very weak against slashing damage, and the healing items are even more scarce). And then, even beyond that, is the 4th area that returns to the modern age with makeshift sports equipment-type weapons, like bowling balls tied into lacrosse nets and baseball pitching machines, and is the largest difficulty spike in the game!
** The floors past the 40th are made to be even worse than before, as you can only carry 5 to seven items before going there, [[EliteMooks Haters and Hunters are the only enemies]] with post-end game weapons and no way to go but up unless you find a secret floor that can warp you back in the Waiting Room.

* DrugsAreBad: In a sense... mushrooms within the game can come in either beneficial or harmful varieties, just like their real life counterparts (albeit, the ones in real life don't ''explode'' like some varieties in-game), with the player capable of weaponizing mushrooms either way. In the backstory the Mushroom Magistrate was outright driven ''insane'' from all the mushrooms she consumed while she traveled the world.

*** You need Kill Coins to buy higher-tier fighters

* GlassCannon: [[{{Cyborg}} Tubers]], they are easier to kill than Screamers but the later models can hurt a lot.

** The Shooter class, with its focus on guns. At first there is not enough bullets and damage to make it worthwhile, but uncapped firearms hurt almost as much as melee weapons, have head-shot bonus damage and enough bullets to clear ten floors by themselves. They pretty much trivialize end game content when properly used.

* LimitBreak: Rage attacks are only available when you have enough stocks of Rage, but can turn the tide of a battle when used strategically.
* LowLevelAdvantage: After you beat Coen on the 3rd Floor, the Tokyo Death Metro will unlock. This will give you the opportunity to upgrade various parts of your waiting room as well as the potential to find more character types that will make you go up a tier. As a consequence, you'll be forced to join one of the dozens of warring factions which will leave you susceptible to raids on your Kill Coin and [=SPLithium=] reserves. Going up tiers lets you access more equipment, but higher level Haters will begin to crop up and your account will be made known to potential assassins. Staying on the first three floors (and the first tier) will limit how much you can level up and spend, but the lack of severe opposition will give patient players time to assemble a decent roster of reserve fighters to go on expeditions and guard their bases once they actually join the TDM. There's also nothing stopping you from achieving increased Weapon Mastery on those floors as those are not obstructed by levels or tiers, just by you killing enemies with the weapon in question.

* PlayerVersusPlayer: While this game is an total solitary experience, there are two ways through which players can interact with others.

* PressXToDie: Some mushrooms have detrimental effects when eaten: Doomshrooms are poisonous, Funny Fungi cause you to become sluggish and unable to attack, and Boomshrooms...eating those is a very, '''''[[YourHeadASplode VERY]]''''' bad idea. But they will give you XP when eaten.

* RefugeInAudacity: The game's main icon is TheGrimReaper ''on a skateboard''. Who calls you ''Senpai''! Your weaponsmith also rocks a Hitler mustache, and the girl in charge of the PowerTattoo shop pole-dances when not conducting business with you.

* {{Roguelike}}: Floors with certain randomness to the layout, the same is said about enemies and dying is a {{Permadeath}}. In fact, Uncle Death outright calls it a Roguelike the first time you wake up in Hater Arcade.

** The Goretastic Finisher for the Machate has you decapitate your foe [[Film/{{Highlander}} with a burst of lightning flashing from the wounds]].

** Jackson used to take totally naked selfies near explosions for the thrills with grenades on his crotch. It didn't end well... [[spoiler: for his fiancé. He died when Jackson wanted to make another explosion selfie, and Jackson went on a grief-fuelled rampage until the Earth Rage killed him with his own grenade.]]
** Crowley went through self surgery so he could look like a wizard and then used his studies in plasma to cause destruction. However, he died a KarmicDeath when a thunderbolt killed him during the Earth Rage after he confessed to being behind a freak accident that caused 200 deaths.
** Taro founded a league where he fought other athletes to the death and most likely ate their remains afterward. Not all of this was legal, yet he broadcasted himself with record ratings.

* WakeUpCallBoss: Jin-Die on floor 16, Kaga. The area is a pain and the boss damage is how you'll get introduced to buying new tier fighters, because tier one fighters won't last against it.

** [[spoiler:And the Death Drive XXX is an add-on to the Death Drive 128 that comes in the form of a fourth tier that uses SODA POP as "liquid software"]]. Seriously, WHAT?

*** You need Kill Coins to buy higher-tier fighters - or to rescue them if they die and you can't fight them yourself.

** All weapons and armor development requires [=SPLithium=] of varying degrees.
** Upgrading your base requires massive amounts of [=SPLithium=].
* Death Metals are the main currency you exchange real-world currency for or work the hardest quests to accomplish.
** The most important power of Death Metals is that they can immediately bring a dead fighter back to life with full HP and invisibility. Can you resist the temptation?
** If a character dies in the tower, they can be retrieved by spending Death Metals.
** The Hernia and Mushroom Vendor sell higher-quality equipment for Death Metals.
** Upgrading your storage space and base decor requires Death Metals.
** You can also expedite the cooldown timers - but at a staggering cost.
* Bloodinium, a strange substance which grows from specific mushrooms. Yotsuyama is offering a bounty of this strange substance in exchange for attempting climbs past the 50th floor.
** Its primary use is augmenting fighters with even higher stats.
** It can also be used at the Hernia to purchase endgame items.* FinishingMove: Goretastic attacks are not only visually spectacular, but finishing an enemy with one gives you bonus rewards.

* FictionalCurrency: Three of them. First is Kill Coins, change that drops from enemies that you can use to buy new decals from the Mushroom Club, researched equipment from Komodore Suzuki, materials and blueprints from Kommando Kawasaki, and using the elevators and TDM. Second is Death Medals, which let you use a number of services provided by Direct Hell Insurance, such as immediately reviving your Fighter after dying and upgrading your Storage Box, as well as expedite the cooldown timers. Third is Super Particle Lithium, or [=SPLithium=], which lets you develop new equipment from blueprints found in the Tower of Barbs and upgrade your Waiting Room via Tetsuo, the ticket robot for the Tokyo Death Metro.
* FinishingMove: Goretastic attacks are not only visually spectacular, but finishing an enemy with one gives you bonus rewards.

* RealityEnsues: Of all the games to have this trope, Let It Die has some examples.
** The War Ensemble type armor have good projectile resistance, mostly bullets, but are weak to slashing attacks since they are mostly bulletproof vests and body armor not made to stop knives. The Candle Wolf type armors are replica knight and samurai sets, and while good against slashing damage, are vulnerable to bullets and other projectiles since the bullets simply pierce through the plate. The M.I.L.K armors are strong against blunt attacks since they are made for contact sports, and the D.O.D have resistance against elements since they are customized work uniforms for fireman or electricians.
** The Screamers can hear gunshots, so shooting one might alert others in the area, they might not find you but they will be nearby since they know someone's in the area.