Death and Taxes

In this 2D, narrative-based game, you assume the role of the Grim Reaper... on an office job. Your job is to decide which people are going to live or die. The consequences of your choices are yours to bear…

75 20 February 2020

Adventure Indie Point-and-click Puzzle Role-playing (RPG) Simulator Strategy Visual Novel Comedy

Death and Taxes is an adventure developed by Placeholder Gameworks, released 20 February 2020 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Android. The main story takes about 4.5 hrs to finish.

Verified 1 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Steam , Wikipedia

What Death and Taxes is

Death and Taxes is an adventure game developed by Placeholder Gameworks and released in 2020. It was published by Hawthorn Games. It is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, Linux, Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows). It runs on Unity.

The premise, in the publisher's words

Death and Taxes is a 2020 simulation video game by Leene Künnap, an Estonian indie game developer, and published by their company, Placeholder Gameworks, on February 20, 2020 on Steam. The player takes the role of a Grim Reaper, who must bureaucratically decide the fates of humans, specifically whether they will live or die. The game shares its ideology with the death-positivity movement, trying to open the discussion of death in a light-hearted way. On March 18, 2020, Placeholder Gameworks uploaded the game code under the MIT License on GitHub.

Description from Wikipedia · source

How it plays

It is played from a first person perspective. Its themes are comedy. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. There are 60 achievements to unlock.

How it was received

Death and Taxes holds a critic score of 75 out of 100. That places it above 49% of the 7,527 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2020 averaged 73, so it scored 2 points above the year average.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 4.5 hrs.

What you need to run it

The minimum specification calls for i3 or equivalent, 2 GB RAM and Integrated graphics or GPU with atleast 512 MB of VRAM. At 2GB of RAM, it will run on essentially any working PC — that is below what a budget laptop ships with today. Install size is roughly 2GB. Both tiers are compared side by side on the requirements page, and you can check your own parts against them without installing anything.

Full requirements and PC checker →

What it launched against

Death and Taxes launched on 20 February 2020, within three weeks of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Black Mesa, Dreams and Call of Duty: Warzone. All of them reviewed better. It arrived 7 years into the PlayStation 4's life, so it was built for hardware developers already knew well.

Released around the same time: Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Black Mesa, Dreams, Call of Duty: Warzone.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Death and Taxes yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

Know one? Send it in and we will test it →

Official trailer

Sourced from the publisher’s YouTube channel.

Screenshots

All media

Quick answers

Death and Taxes — frequently asked questions

When did Death and Taxes come out?

Death and Taxes was released on 20 February 2020 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Android, Linux, Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

What are the minimum PC requirements for Death and Taxes?

At minimum, Death and Taxes needs i3 or equivalent, 2 GB RAM, Integrated graphics or GPU with atleast 512 MB of VRAM graphics, 2 GB available space of storage.

How long does it take to beat Death and Taxes?

The main story of Death and Taxes takes around 4.5 hrs.

How many GB is Death and Taxes?

The PC version needs about 2 GB of storage, going by the storage line in the system requirements ("2 GB available space"). Updates can add to that, and console versions have their own sizes, which are not listed here.

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