You may know Ron Gilbert for the Monkey Island games, for Thimbleweed Park or even his kid-friendly Putt-Putt games, but Gilbert's latest project is rather different.
Death by Scrolling had a “world premiere” trailer during this year’s Gamescom gaming expo, and it’s a rogue-like rpg-inspired action game rather than a humorous adventure.
You guide your little adventurer through a fantasy game world, picking up upgrades and killing enemies, all while dealing with a constantly-scrolling view. If the bottom of the screen catches up with you, it’s game over.
It’s likely to attract some comparisons to massive 2021 hit Vampire Survivors, despite having some key differences in its mechanics. But Ron Gilbert says he started work on the game long before that title came out.
In a blog post from February 2025, Gilbert said he started work on Death by Scrolling even before Covid hit.
“I started working on this game back in 2019. It started out great and everybody I showed it to loved it, but it was simple. Everyone asked for progression and “game” stuff and over the next six months I proceeded to ruin it,” Gilbert wrote.
The project then languished as Gilbert worked on Return to Monkey Island, which came out in 2022 with great reviews. But Death by Scrolling is back, and apparently no longer ruined.
“I rebuilt the whole project, stripping out all the stupid stuff and returned it to the core of the game back when it was fun,” says Gilbert.
Death by Scrolling lets you choose a character at the start of each run, each of which “has their own perks.”
You collect upgrades and gold that, by the look of the trailer, is used to pay the ferryman at the end of each level. And that makes sense in Death by Scrolling’s lore context because it's set in purgatory. Cheery stuff.
The trailer did not reveal Death by Scrolling’s release date. And while Gilbert suggested the game would be out in 2025 much earlier this year, its Steam page only lists it as “coming soon.”
Death by Scrolling has only been announced for PC, but looks like the sort of title that could be a great fit for a future Nintendo Switch port.
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