A Date with Death

The game is a visual novel and dating sim. The player can customize the main character's name, appearance, and gender. Most of the game is centered around selecting options for the protagonist's interactions with the Grim Reaper, primarily through instant messaging and video calls.

The protagonist, an otherwise ordinary young adult who has had multiple near-death experiences, finds a new app on their laptop that they are unable to delete. Opening it, they are taken to a chatroom where another user calling himself the Grim Reaper (nicknamed "Grim" by the protagonist) demands their soul. He also video calls the protagonist in an attempt to prove his identity. Though skeptical of his claims, the protagonist finds Grim attractive and agrees to a wager: if he is unable to claim the protagonist's soul within a week, they will be entitled to take Grim's soul.

Over the week, the protagonist endures several more calamities, but is uninjured each time. They continue chatting with Grim who is initially reluctant to divulge personal details about himself, including his real name. On the third day, Grim is sick from an imbalance in his soul. With the intent for himself and the protagonist to understand each other better, Grim offers to temporarily channel some of his own life force into them, but warns that they will go insane if they attempt to reject him partway through the ritual. Subsequently, Grim reveals that the protagonist has an unusual aura compared to other mortals he has seen.

A Date with Death was developed by Two and a Half Studios, an Australian independent game developer. They released A Date with Death in December 2023 as freeware.

A paid DLC expansion for the game adding a new ending among other supplementary content was released alongside the base game. A second expansion, titled Beyond the Bet, released on December 8th, 2024. It was funded on Kickstarter, where it successfully raised AU$277,600 out of the original AU$28,000 goal.

PC Gamer's Jonathan Bolding was pleased with the game's amount of content given its status as freeware. Jou Lee Yang of The Boss Rush Network scored A Date with Death a perfect 5/5, praising its writing, characterization, artwork, and soundtrack. Jenni Lada of Siliconera wrote positively of its humor and replayability. Speaking of the various dialogue options, she elaborated, "These might not all help shape the ending, but they build up insight into the character and make it feel like you’re connecting in a significant way."

Reviewing the Beyond the Bet expansion, Lada praised the pacing and new endings.