Deaths Gambit

Death's Gambit is an excellent game. It won't be for everyone, but it was perfect for me.
You play as Sorun, a solider from the kingdom of Vados sent to Siradon as part of an expedition to obtain the source of immortality. You die on your way in, but Death brings you back to (un)life and offers you a contract: you get to keep living if you work for him. You sign in blood (naturally) and begin to work your way to the source of immortality.
Your true purpose in Siradon is to try to find your mother, Everly, who went on a previous expedition and never returned. A secondary goal, assuming you can't find her, is Sorun's desire to be remembered. Death's goal seems to be to get rid of the source of immortality, but you get hints of something deeper going on the further you progress.
The game is a 2D soulslike platformer. The expected soulslike things in the game like Estus Flasks (Phoenix Plumes), souls (essence), and bonfires (Death Statues) are all in the game. An interesting twist on the formula is that you don't drop your essence when you die, so you're never in danger of losing currency/experience. Instead when you die you drop one of you Phoenix Plume charges, which you can pick back up or spend essence to regain it from a Death Statue.
Bosses in Death's Gambit are where you may end up spending the most time. They can be rather difficult at times, and they will take the same kind of pattern learning that is necessary in other soulslike games. Another unique feature of this game is that it keeps track of how far you've made it on a boss and rewards you accordingly. If your best run against a boss was getting them down to 25% health, the game will give you 75% of the total essence reward you would get from beating it. You don't get rewarded every time you fight, but getting something back for getting further on a boss feels good.
Throughout the game are journals you can find that give you a short lore blurb on each boss. There are two to find for each boss, and each one you find permanently increases the damage you deal against that boss by 5%. This just feels like a nice feature that rewards exploration.
Each boss (except maybe one) also has the option of unlimited rematches against a harder Heroic version of the boss after you beat it the first time. You get rewarded for each time you beat a boss on Heroic, so you can use this for farming certain items.
The pixel art in the game is really pretty, and the sound design and music can really pull you in. I absolutely love the voice acting. The fantasy theme with undercurrents of ancient super technology and cosmic horror makes the setting really feel dynamic and interesting. The themes of accepting the finality of death and the small pepperings of comedy throughout the game really make it something special to me.
I hope if you're interested you'll give it a chance.

I had already tried this game when it was new and i just gave up back then...
it was very buggy, everything felt floaty and just "empty".
I decided to give it a new go now, years later, with all the updates.
...i'm so happy i did.
the amount of extra content, fixes and revamp of mechanics is astonishing.
White Rabbit managed to turn a clunky,unmemorable game that felt aimless the whole time, into a true gem.
There are still problems to be fair, and the jump in quality between the original content and the newer one is extremely noticeable (which, while appreciated, kinda feels jarring to fight the newer bosses, they contrast a ton from the original lineup)
However, surprisingly, my favorite improvement is the story and worldbuilding.
The original game always felt a bit lacking in personality, but the addition of some characters, new dialogues and bosses, and the new material, managed to turn a very forgettable experience into a very meaningful story about regrets, forgiveness and how our past pain shapes us.
It's not the most original story, but especially later parts are just beautifully made

For anyone who played this game before the "Afterlife" updates, I can confirm that it is much improved, in fact as far as I'm concerned it's pretty much a different game. It's not just a balance fix here and there but complete redesigning of many things. For one it actually feels like a metroidvania game now with abilities gained after bosses and actually needed to access areas and it's not just in a linear fashion anymore. It's actually quite open, I have to rate this as one of my favourite metroidvanias. It's also been given great improvements to the story. The story is pretty damn good, in fact I cried a bit during the true ending it was fantastic. The combat is also really good and I did not feel it was inaccessible, except for one point. This brings me to the one downside, the true ending is somewhat skill-gated and I think it's horrible practice to gate off narrative content, especially endings. To access it you need to defeat 5 Heroic Bosses, which are souped-up refights against previous bosses. As is often the case when souping-up bosses some of them become quite inaccessible. I was able to do it, but there are definitely people who would not be able to. And while this can be watched via youtube, the path towards the true ending really is amazing and something everyone should get to experience for themselves.

I expected another Souls-like + Metroidvania fantasy game. It went far beyond that.

Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a neat, but hard, pixel styled adventure game. I even managed to die 6 times before reaching the first shrine. Did found a secret quick ending and did manage to kill that Vrael guy.
The game gives you the option to pick from 7 classes, yet you can pick up the weapons and learn skills from the other classes throughout the game if you want. As you travel through a very pretty pixel styled world you face many enemies with each their own mechanics. Explore around from hidden treasure and solve puzzles on how to reach certain locations. The game will show you no mercy. Dieing and trying again is a part of the game and moves the plot forward.
Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a challenging but rather fun game.

Many may disagree with me, but this game was made with heart, and you can feel it throughout the entire gameplay. In our time, when games are made for profit, like on an assembly line, this game evokes a sense of nostalgia for the times when developers simply made what they wanted. They wrote a story they wanted to tell, just so it would be heard. This game made me laugh, sympathize, and, to be honest, in the end, I just couldn't hold back my tears. And the music...it is just magical sometimes. I definitely recommend it for everyone who likes a good story.

Steam Deck review
This game was played exclusively on the deck and unfortunately it was not a flawless experience :
- There are some random stutters here and there, even with enabled performance mode
- The text is really small and at times requires some eye pinching. Maybe an UI scaling option would be helpful
Apart from that, the gameplay was fun enough to keep me from flushing the game. The game´s difficulty can be more on the easier side, depending on your build. But if you do seek a challenge, you can always replay bosses on "heroic" difficulty.
For 20€ you'll get a nice little metroidvania / souls-like experience, that has a grim story, sprinkled with some funny toads here and there.