So this doesn’t fit amazingly to the forum but I found that game Devs often have the most interesting takes on these things.
Recently I have been wondering about depictions of death. And I’m curious to know if you prefer a cold distant and negatively seen personification of death or a warm close comforting personification of death.
It is important for my game but also I’m just curious.
Depends on the feel you’re going for in your game. Do you want the player to avoid death, or just see it as an inconvenience? Are you trying to make a serious or humorous game? How does it affect the plot of your game?
It also depends on the emotional attachment to the thing that’s dying/dead.
What do you want the player to feel in these situations?
As said a big part is just curiousity. But my games aspect is that I finally found what to do when the players die without resetting them. And that involves a personified death.
I’m not even sure if I should share this here but I had a very strong near-death experience not even a couple of months ago. It wasn’t through natural means, lets just say that, and the feeling is incredibly hard to explain.
On one hand, it felt like I wanted to panic and fight for my life no matter what, but at the same time, I was in a state where nothing in the world made sense to me. I didn’t know what life is, I didn’t know what time is or how time worked. I tried to recall anything I used to know, but nothing ever came to my mind. Shapes and objects became just messes of colors shifting together, sounds felt distant, and every time I tried to snap out of it, I quite literally felt like I forgot how to function as a human being. It’s an experience I never wish on anyone else.
Since then I’ve tried to replicate the feeling multiple times through games, the absolue best I could do was to use shaders that mesh colors together in ways that make little to no sense, where you can ALMOST make out shapes, shapes you think you know and recognize, but it never quite forms a coherent image at all, and keeps falling apart. It’s a cycle of trying to visualize the world as you know it, but failing at it over and over and over again.
If I had to sum it up, it feels like you’re trapped in your own mind, and your mind is almost completely empty.
Thanks a ton for sharing
You said yourself you tried to recreate it. If it’s ok with you I will use this post along with my own experiences to create this feeling for the player dying and from my own experience the feeling of losing another for the others.
The games idea started from trying to make a multiplayer game that isn’t a game of statistics but a game of spirit and emotions.
So thanks a ton for sharing
Of course, I learned a lot from the experience so I’m happy to share when I know it’ll be useful for others too.
Edit: I think that’s why there’s this old saying of “your entire life will flash before your eyes” because you try to recall so much, anything, to cling to. Just something to ground yourself and be able to pull yourself out of the feeling.
I like Death from DiscWorld, a little snarky but not evil, a force of nature.
Both fascinated by humanity, and stumped at our strange behaviors.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
‘Are you Death?’
IT’S THE SCYTHE, ISN’T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
‘I’m going to die?’
POSSIBLY.
‘Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?’
OH, YES. IT’S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT’S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
‘What’s that?’
I’M NOT SURE.
'That’s very helpful.
Personally, I like the view of Death as a guide, whose business it is to get ‘you’ from your mortal life to wherever you’re going next, like Charon of Greek mythology. Of course I’m biased, seeing as I’m currently alive 
Yeah I think I personally like a warm embrace of death perspective. Deaths job is to bring you to the other side. He guides them not drags them.