Angels of Death Game Story
Review and story-telling written by The Lore
Image taken by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QLUQEEYD5E
This game is based on the manga Angels of Death written by Makoto
Sanada and artwork by Kudan Naduka. This game is an example of how a book can
transform into a video game. The game is very story based. It is made on RPG
Maker as a horror game. The graphics are pixilated, and characters talk with
speech bubbles. They have larger pictures of their faces showing different
expressions as they talk. There’s fun sound effects, from little bells to
signal something important, to a cute demonic laugh for certain characters. The
game is very charming. It’s set up as being one game that controls four games,
to represent the different books that make up the story. This is summarized
account of the story.
The story starts in a medical room. Small thirteen-year-old
Rachel Gardner, or Ray, gets out of her chair to stare at an artificial moon
out of an artificial window. She seems confused, saying she remembers that she
was in a hospital, a medical examination room, and that she needs to find her
mom and dad.
Image taken from https://www.castingcall.club/projects/satsuriku-no-tenshi-fandub-angels-of-death-angels-of-slaughter
The elevator stops and won’t go further than B6. The floor looks
like the streets of a city, with paved walkways, road, and stinking garbage in
dumpsters. Rachel doesn’t recognize the place and reads old newspapers on the
walls talking of a serial killer and his many victims. There’s old blood stains
in different areas of the floor. Rachel finds a baby bird with an injured wing
hiding on the floor. Rachel takes pity on the creature, forcibly realigns the
bones in its wing, then sews the wing back together with her sewing kit. An
unidentifiable sound startles the bird away from Rachel, and she tries to call
the bird back to her, gently. She reassures the tiny creature that everyone
will be alright. That they will leave that basement together.
Suddenly a man bursts through a wooden door behind the bird
with a scythe. He is covered in bandages, and carries a scythe, laughing
maniacally as he slices the bird in half.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396193501/
The man tells Rachel to stop smiling,
and to look at him in despair. He gives her to the count of three to run away
before he kills her, laughing at the terror on Ray’s face. The game then
introduces the man as the B6 Level Master: Zack.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/367324913343384087/
Ray successfully hides from
the foul-mouthed killer and goes back to the bird’s remains. She wants to bury
the bird, but stares at it’s torn body and says, “No. You’re not my little
birdy. Not like this. Not like this. You shouldn’t look like this. It’s just
cruel.” Ray then sews together the bird’s body, demonstrating that our cute
little girl protagonist may not be fully sane. Ray is then able to successfully
escape to another elevator, with Zack hot on her heels.
Ray then arrives on Floor B5. This floor looks much more like
a hospital, waiting room and reception desk included. There are still no people
in sight, until a man in a lab coat emerges from a door and calls our Rachel’s
name, recognizing her. He has short brown hair and one glass eye. He reminds
Rachel that he is the doctor she has been seeing for counseling, Dr. Danny, or
Daniel Dickens.
Image from https://steamcommunity.com/app/537110/images/?searchText=&browsefilter=trendday&filterLanguage=default
Dr. Danny tells Rachel he’s not familiar with the building, and
that she was probably chased by a psycho killer on the previous floor. He
accompanies Rachel as they explore the level, finding keys for locked rooms,
and reminds her how beautiful her blue eyes are. He tells her to take
precautions to protect her eyes. The lab equipment is all for eye care. Rachel
begins to feel uneasy around Dr. Danny, and his obsession with “peepers”.
That’s right. The doctor calls eyes “peepers”.
As they travel, Dr. Danny talks
more and more about Ray’s eyes and his love for them, how he wants to forever
live by them. Understandably, this would freak out the 13-year-old girl. He
asks her to help him find his true glass eye, and when she finds the jar
containing it, he tell her to wait while he puts in his new eye. Ray tries to
run for it while his back is turned but finds that Dr. Danny had locked the
door. He comes out wear one eye that has two irises, one green, one red.
Dr.
Danny admits he’s the floor’s boss, and straps Ray to an examination table. As
Ray struggles against the restraints, Danny says that the exuberance that was
once in her eyes is no longer there.
He asks her to remember why she was there.
Ray begs him to let her go so she can see her parents. Danny laughs and says,
“You will meet your parents soon… in Hell”.
Rachel stops struggling as she remembers that her parents are
dead. Dr. Danny talks in glee about how her eyes have returned to their true
state. Ray looks on with a dead stare. Dr. Danny releases her from her
restraints, and immediately afterwards, the door to the room breaks down and
Zack comes in and slices Dr. Danny. Zack says, “Whee! What were you so happy
about, Danny?” He notices Rachel sitting on the table and comes over to her.
“Going after you got me in a lot of trouble, little missy. Do you want to live?
Then run! Time to get slashed!”
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396150788/
Zack wraps his scythe around Rachel, but she just stares at nothing and doesn’t react. Zack then curses and takes away his scythe, complaining that Rachel’s reaction was boring. “I’m a respectable male adult, and I’m not into shredding emotionless dolls”. This demonstrates part of Zack’s quirky charms.
Zack wraps his scythe around Rachel, but she just stares at nothing and doesn’t react. Zack then curses and takes away his scythe, complaining that Rachel’s reaction was boring. “I’m a respectable male adult, and I’m not into shredding emotionless dolls”. This demonstrates part of Zack’s quirky charms.
The intercom then comes on, announcing, “Betrayer alert! The
6th floor’s master has attacked the 5th floor’s master.
This is a violation of the rules. Along with Rachel, the betrayer is also now
hereby a sacrifice”. Zack curses and says he has to run for it and leaves. Rachel
gets up and goes after Zack, finding him bashing the elevator door’s, trying to
get out. She approaches Zack and asks, “I have a favour to ask. Umm… Please.
Kill me.”
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Zack takes a step away from Rachel and vomits on the floor. “Don’t
ask me to do creepy @$#@ like that.” He then asks Rachel to get the elevator
door working. She goes back on the floor, taking keys from Danny’s coat, and
finds the button to operate the elevator. Zack notices she was able to get the
elevator working and makes a deal with her: If she helps him get outside, then
he’d kill her. This is the base of their relationship going on from here. They
take the elevator up one floor to B4.
B4 has a small pool, brick walls, and a dirt floor. Further
into the level, there are many graves and headstones listing people who have
come and died before. In one room, there is a and elegant gravestone and empty
grave. Not far from it is a large rock resembling a headstone and an empty
grave. The elegant one has Rachel’s name on it. The rough one having Zack’s. There’s
a crack in the wall at the back of the room. Zack can’t fit through the crack,
so Rachel says she’ll go on ahead without him.
Zack tell her, “Oh, and if you die in there, just shout, “I’m
dead!” so I know not to wait for you.
Rachel responds calmly, “… I can’t if I’m dead.”
Zack gets flustered and tells Rachel to shut up and just go. Zack
finds it hard to interact with Rachel, as usually he tries threatening to kill
her if she doesn’t obey. Then he remembers that she’s there because she wants
to die, and his death threat doesn’t work. Rachel makes a request for Zack to
not destroy her gravestone before she leaves. As Rachel continues her own, she
finds little love notes seemingly for her, that speak of wanting what she
wants, and wanting to kill her. Zack is shown to be illiterate, so the audience
knows that it’s likely B4’s boss writing the notes. Zack, left to his own
devices, finds a pickaxe, and destroys every gravestone he finds, laughing in
glee at the destruction he causes. Rachel comes back, a bit sad her gravestone
was destroyed but Zack promises to find her a better one outside. The story
continues in fleshing out Zack’s background and morals, and we learn he hates
liars.
Zack finally comes to the point where he asks Rachel, “If you
want to die so bad, then why not just kill yourself?” Rachel responds, “It’s
unforgivable. It’s the will of God.”
The two separate again, and Zack meets B4’s boss: Eddie or
Edward Mason. Eddie is the size of a young teen with a sack on his head and a
shovel in his hand. Zack tries to attack Eddie, but Eddie has the lights turn
off and easily dodges Zack’s attacks. Eddie tells Zack that he loves Rachel and
will be the one to kill her.
Eddie ditches Zack and finds Rachel, confessing his love for her. He offers to kill her however she wants and would make a new beautiful resting place for her. Zack comes to try to find Rachel and Eddie but is separated by a wall and can only hear them through a crack in it. Rachel stands, indecisive on getting her wish right away with Eddie, or helping Zack escape first. Zack starts breaking down the wall, saying that he swears to God, he’ll be the one to kill her.
After hearing that, Rachel encourages Zack to break down the
wall. Eddie flees when Zack successfully breaks down the wall.
Later, a confrontation occurs with the three. Rachel tells
Eddie that he will not be the one to kill her. Zack shoves Eddie into an open
grave and traps him by pushing a tombstone onto the opening.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/675117800362624978/
The tombstone has
a button on its back, letting Rachel and Zack go up a level to B3.
B3 looks like a prison. Obvious cameras on the concrete
walls, brick floor, and an iron-barred gate keeping them from leaving the area
with the elevator. After a couple of minutes of trying to figure out how to get
through the gate, a couple of machine guns emerge from the walls and shoot
where Rachel was standing, until Zack grabbed her out of the way.
A female voice comes over the speakers, laughing. The voice
calls them two sinners, and that she’ll watch them writhe in agony until
forgiven. The voice has a game-show feel to her. The door opens and allows
Rachel and Zack to enter a room where they must take each other’s mugshots with
a placard.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396242218/
They’re then lead into an area with two routes. One, the voice
promises is full of torture with a small chance at freedom. The other, is
lifetime imprisonment. Rachel and Zack decide to take their chances with the
punishment rooms. The first “punishment room” they enter has an electric chair
behind iron bars with the gate open. Facing the chair is 16 mannequin dolls sitting
in their own chairs. After searching the room, Zack gets tired and sits in the
electrical chair. Rachel tries to warn him to get out of it, but the chair
snaps their restraints shut on him before he can listen to Rachel. A tv screen
turns on showing Cathy, the floor’s boss.
Image taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StIvXMLEH6c
A pretty woman in military tire with
a riding crop in hand. She taunts Zack for sitting in the chair, and the gate
slams shut between Zack and Rachel. Zack is then hit with an electrical
current. He continues being electrocuted until Rachel figures out that she has
to make the mannequins not look at the electrical chair to turn it off.
Zack gets out of the chair and says, “Hey! What the Hell took
you so long? A little longer, and a drop of my piss could’ve powered the world
for 1000 $#@$ing years!” That line is my personal favourite in the game.
Continuing to the next “Punishment Room”, they enter a closed
off contained chamber with bodies, seemingly junk, an empty large safe, a tv,
and a broken-down gas mask. They’re told by Cathy on a monitor that they’re now
locked in, toxic gas will start filling the chamber and they’ve limited time to
get out. After solving puzzles, Rachel and Zack get a key card that would let
them out, but Zack forces the card in the wrong way and breaks it. Catchy mocks
them for their stupidity and states they will die there.
Image taken from http://theoverlooktheatre.blogspot.ca/2017/07/angels-of-death-is-zack-alive-or-dead.html
Ray’s solution is to
hide in the safe and set up an explosive that would ignite the gas. With that
explosion, they were able to leave the punishment room.
Cathy orders Ray and Zack to separate to continue and leads
them to a room with bars dividing them. In the middle of each side of the room
is a syringe filled with a fluid. Cathy appears on a platform above them,
laughs, and orders that both syringes need to be injected before she lets them
continue. One syringe has vitamins, another has a toxin that can lull you to
sleep and torment you with nightmares. Cathy leaves them to decide and after
deliberation, Zack injects both syringes and they leave their rooms and meet up
in the next one. The drugs begin their effect on Zack and he brings out his
scythe and states that he’s craving to kill. While Ray would be impassive to
this, she knows Zack truly wants her help to get out before he kills her, so
she runs.
Zack corners Ray into a white room, but before he can kill
her, Cathy pulls a trigger on Zack, shooting him in the arm. Cathy, safely on
the other side of some glass, tosses Ray a gun and says Zack and Rachel should
fight to the death. Ray picks up the gun but refuses to shoot. Zack takes his
scythe, and though he wants to kill Ray, refuses to do so because Cathy ordered
him. Drugs still in his system, desire to kill high, he cuts open his own
stomach. Cathy, upset at having her fun ruined, comes onto the other side of
the glass. She taunts the dying Zack and curses Rachel for being dull. Ray
pulls the gun on Cathy, but Cathy says the gun wasn’t loaded to begin with. Cathy
shoots Ray somewhere nonlethal and goes over to Zack and thinks out-loud about
how to kill him. There’s a lot of getting shot and the wound getting forgotten
about in this game.
Ray has a flashback, seeing the person she saw get murdered
in front of her again. She pulls out the ‘something wrapped in cloth’- a gun, from
her bag and shoots Cathy in an also non-lethal place. With Cathy distracted,
Zack lops off Cathy’s arm with his scythe, then slices Cathy.
Rachel and Zack continue to B2. Zack falls unconscious in the
elevator on the ride up. The floor looks like that of an old manor, candles
lining the wooden walls and a simple tile floor. Ray drags Zack off the
elevator but can’t take him much further. Ray enters what looks to be a
confessional booth, breathing in a sweet scent. She sees lots of weird things,
foreshadows as she travels, looking for medical supplies for Zack.
Image taken from https://www.hardcoregamer.com/2017/01/06/review-angels-of-death/242080/
She follows
organ music and finally enters a church hall with pews, an organ playing, and a
priest in purple robes. He introduces himself as Gray and states he holds no
ill will towards Ray, until he judges her soul.
Ray asks if Gray has medicine,
which Gray replies that medical supplies are only found on B5. Ray goes back to
tell Zack she needs to go back to get medicine, and Zack requests she bring him
a couple things from his floor. Gray then accompanies Rachel down the floors,
asking her questions along the way. Cathy, Eddy and Danny’s bodies are no where
to be found. The medicine racks are bare. Ray collects bandages and a knife
from Zack’s floor
Returning to B2 with Gray, Ray finds that Zack isn’t where
she left him. Before Ray can go looking for him, Gray states that he has
observed and found Rachel to be a wretched soul and will go through a trial
before being punished. Gray states he needs to prepare for the trail and
leaves. Ray finds Zack, and he says Danny came by and taunted him, and that
Danny has the medicine.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/493425702908982607/
He can’t move still so she travels along alone but
takes the knife she brought him as protection. She uses the knife multiple
times as a tool to progress, and the blade comes corroded and chipped. Seeking
Danny, she finds Gray. Gray admits he’s the person who brought all the Angels
of Death to the building, including Zack.
He says she is a witch and will have her trial.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/357332551675901324/
He drugs her, and she
finds herself on a podium for judgment. Danny, Eddy and Cathy all come forward
testifying of their knowledge of Rachel. In conclusion of the trial, Gray
condemns her to be burned at the stake as a witch. Rachel finds herself on a
cross and burning, yelling that she’s not a witch. She yells for God to help
her, but Gray tells her that her God doesn’t exist. Gray says that he is a
servant of God, but in this place, he is as closest to a God as a person can
be. Gray tells her he is God.
Gray leaves Rachel to burn. Rachel mentally falls into
despair before noticing she feels the cold of the blade from Zack’s knife on
her. She thinks, “My God is with me
after all”, focuses on the knife, and brings herself out of the illusion she
was in.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/336151559671276372/
Gray is mystified as to how she isn’t being affected by his
hallucinogenic drug anymore. Using Zack’s knife as a threat, she orders Gray to
give her the medicine. Gray does as he was ordered and is once again surprised
when Rachel turns to leave. “You’re not going to kill me?” he asks. “Do you
stand in my way?” she replies. Gray says nothing and Rachel leaves.
Rachel returns to Zack, applies medicine externally, sews his
stomach together and bandages him.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/537476536771261452/
Zack asks her why she’s doing so much to help
him, and she states that he is her God. Zack accepts this statement, and they
continue off the floor to B1. In the elevator on the way up, Rachel acts a bit
strange. It’s clear she wants to say something, has a guilty conscience, but
can’t.
On B1, it looks like the inside of a house, with a clock
ticking on the wall. Zack notices blood trails on the floor and Ray stands
behind him. As Zack continues forward, Ray begs him to not go forward and to
not look in the room. Zack continues, and she follows reluctantly.
In the room, Zack finds a man and woman sewn together,
different parts of their bodies stuffed. They sit on a couch, a large blood
stain at their feet. Most of the room is filled with flowers. Ray grows
hysterical, begging to be killed right away before collapsing on the floor.
Zack pushes the mass corpse off the couch and placed the unconscious Ray on it.
Zack leaves the room to explore, but finds the door quickly shut and lock
behind him. Danny locked Zack out of the room with Rachel. Danny tells Zack
through the door that he will keep watch on sleeping Rachel until Zack comes to
know Rachel.
Zack travels through the house, hitting trap after trap with
comedic effects. Zack eventually learns Rachel’s past in watching a video. She
is the master of B1, and the couple sewn together were her parents. Her parents
fought all the time. Ray grew up in an unhappy home. She found a puppy on the
street and wanted to bring it home. The dog bit her, she killed it, and she
sewed it back together. She had stated that she made “her perfect puppy.” Her
parents found out. They fought, and her dad killed her mother. He noticed Ray
had seen him kill her mother and chased her into her room with a knife. Rachel
killed him with a gun her mother had in defense. She then sewed her parents
together because she wanted them to get along. She states n the video that she
just wanted a happy family.
Zack returns to confront Rachel, and Danny lets them talk but
keeps a gun on Zack. Zack tells Rachel that he isn’t some god of hers. Rachel
has a mental break down and as the mater of B1, attempts to kill Zack. She runs
away from him and he chases her, falling into more traps she’s made. Eventually
he corners her, and it seems he’s won. A gun cocks behind Zack’s head and Danny
laughs at how they forgot about him. Rachel shoots Danny, saying Zack is hers
to kill. Zack overpowers Rachel and brings her back to common sense. She agrees
that she wants him to kill her still, and she will help him leave the building.
Ray says there isn’t a floor above hers, so the way out must
be somewhere else. Rachel talks to Gray briefly without Zack, and Gray informs
her the exit is on his floor, behind the stained-glass windows. They travel
there and start going up a really long staircase.
An alarm starts going off and a voice over the intercom
states, “Self-destruction sequences is now initiated. Levels will be destroyed
starting from the bottom.” They race up
the stairs and accumulate injuries, leaving Zack’s scythe broken. The building
is on fire and debris falls, making the struggle to continue harder and harder.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396315831/
Ray falls unconscious from blood loss and Zack carries her outside. The police
show up to the burning building they exited. The police take Zack into custody,
but Zack promises the sleeping Rachel that he will still kill her.
In a written epilogue, it is stated that Rachel was taken
into protective custody and then a mental institution. Isaac Foster was taken
to prison and sentenced to death.
The next scene shows Ray in a white gown talking to a
psychiatrist. The way they talk makes it seem like a lot of time has passed. As
Ray is guided to her bedroom, the psychiatrist gleefully informs Rachel, “It is
against rules to tell you this, but you should know that the killer who had
kidnapped you is going to be executed.”
Ray goes to bed and can only close her eyes. She wakes to
banging coming from her room window. She hears her psychiatrist on the other
side of her door asking what the noise is. Rachel realizes that whoever is at
her window is there unlawfully. She barricades her door and goes to look at her
window. The person at her window tells her to get back. Ray steps back and the
windows shatter, curtains billowing in the wind as Zack stand at the ledge, a
new scythe in hand.
Zack looks at Rachel. “TA-DA!”
Rachel looks at him bewildered. “You’re supposed to be in
prison.”
Zack smugly replies, “Prisons are made to be broken out of.”
Rachel, nearly in tears: “So you still want to kill me?”
Zack, still smirking: “This is me we’re talking about here. I
never lose sight of something I want.” He waits by the window and tells her to
hurry up. “Did you forget?”
Rachel, crying, says she didn’t forget and would never
forget. She would never forget their oath. She walks over the broken glass
towards Zack and goes out the window. “Hey Zack, please kill me.” Zack tells
her to “stop your blubberin’ and smile”.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396126670/
The last image in the game you see if of Rachel’s room with
the psychiatrist and security looking at the broken window.
I value this ending because it doesn’t state whether Zack
killed Rachel or if they escaped together and lived together as many of the
fandom hopes for. It’s up for interpretation. My view is that Zack did kill
her, but killed himself afterwards to stay with her.
Image taken from https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/381891243396126660/
* All images were taken off Pinterest or Google. I own none of the images used.
This was an interesting read to do. i liked how you included images from the game. Thought it was well paced together.
ReplyDelete-Laura
I appreciated it. Majority of the images were either from fan art or the manga, but the pixilated show the game gives is a unique feel.
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