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Death and Taxes: What the Game Is About

Play the Grim Reaper as an office worker making life-and-death decisions in Death and Taxes, a darkly comic, branching narrative game.
Length2 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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Death and Taxes is a choice-driven narrative game in which you play the Grim Reaper as an office worker deciding who lives and who dies. Its dark workplace comedy is built around reading each case, making a call, and seeing how those choices shape a branching story.

What is Death and Taxes about?

In Death and Taxes, the Grim Reaper has an office job: deciding which people are going to live or die. The official Steam description frames the work as a series of decisions that affect the world around you. Rather than centering on action, the game puts judgment, dialogue and consequences at the heart of its premise.

The setup turns mortality into bureaucratic workplace comedy, while asking the player to weigh information about the people whose fates are on the desk. The official listing describes choices as meaningful and the story as branching, with multiple secret endings. It does not give a confirmed ending count or spell out every consequence.

How does the gameplay work?

The central loop is to review the information provided about people and decide who lives or dies. Those decisions feed into the story and the state of the world. Dialogue choices are also listed as a feature, so the experience is not limited to marking cases; conversations contribute to its narrative presentation.

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Steam lists fully voiced non-player characters, character customization, original artwork and an original soundtrack among the game’s features. These are details from the store listing, not independent assessments of how well those elements work in play. The listing also offers a free demo for players who want to try the game before buying it.

Is it a comedy, a moral-choice game, or both?

It is presented as both a workplace satire and a choice-driven story. The office-job framing makes the Grim Reaper’s task deliberately bureaucratic, while the decisions concern life and death. That contrast gives the premise its dark-comedy tone and places moral judgment inside the routine of a workplace.

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The official Steam page names Papers, Please, Reigns, Beholder and Animal Inspector as comparisons. Those references suggest a context for the game’s decision-focused setup, but they do not establish that the games share the same mechanics or overall experience.

Who might enjoy Death and Taxes?

The game may suit players who prefer dialogue, consequential decisions and a branching narrative over action-centered play. Its premise may also appeal to readers interested in dark comedy and stories about the ethics of deciding other people’s fates. Players looking for a detailed description of every ending or a guaranteed completion time will not find those specifics in the official pages cited here.

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Content note

Steam’s content note refers to death and suicide in written text. Players who prefer to avoid those subjects should take that note into account before starting.

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When and where was it released?

Death and Taxes was released on February 20, 2020. Steam lists Placeholder Gameworks as developer, with Placeholder Gameworks and Hawthorn Games as publishers. The developer’s game page lists PC and console availability, while its press kit identifies Windows, Mac and Linux PC editions through Steam, itch.io and Game Jolt. Store availability can vary by platform and region, so check the current official listing for the edition available to you.

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The supported purchase routes established by these sources are digital. The pages cited here do not establish a physical game edition or a game-specific physical accessory. Steam also lists the soundtrack as separate downloadable content.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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