Let it Die is a free to play game for the Playstation 4 that paints an interesting picture of the future of games and how we might pay for them. A collaborative effort by famed Japanese video game director Suda 51, and Japanese mobile-game juggernaut Gung Ho, Let it Die is a game anyone with a PS4 can download completely free.

The players find themselves in control of a collection of reanimated corpses in a post-apocalyptic world. The outside world is only shown briefly, but from the lore-building items in the game, we can tell it’s not in very good shape after a world ending catastrophe called the “Earth Rage”. Each player is tasked with using their collection of reanimated bodies to get to the top of a mysterious tower that sprouted from the ground during the “Earth Rage”. The premise is about as silly as the name “Earth Rage”, and this tongue in cheek mood can be found in pockets throughout the entire game.

However that endearing humor is definitely not the only thing setting the mood here. Let it Die also touts Akira Yamaoka as head of sound design. Yamaoka, known for his work in horror series Silent Hill, subverts this whimsical aesthetic at every single turn. The silliness is largely peeled back once you enter the tower, where players will spend the bulk of their time.

Thoughtful characters, out-there vocal performances, and a really nice soundtrack coexist with some much more sinister mechanics. As you traverse the tower, sounds seem to come from nowhere in particular.

Loud, ominous clanging sounds can be heard in the distance, as if some metal monstrosity is hot on the players trail. The three main types of enemies are identified by either throaty zombie-esque growls, or electronic buzzes and beeps, or threats unsettlingly delivered in plain English.

Aside from the less common boss encounters, the tower is populated by three types of enemies. “Screamers” are largely run-of-the-mill zombies that don’t pose much of a threat to players by themselves.

“Tubers”, humanoid robotic enemies fashioned from corpses, are unsettling in concept but make themselves easy to deal with by telegraphing their movements before every action. “Haters”, which make themselves known by shouting a constant stream of expletives at no one in particular, are what players learn to dread. “Haters” are the abandoned avatars of players that died on a given floor of the tower.

One “Hater” populates each floor, so players are guaranteed to encounter them frequently. Players can also send their extra fighters into the world of other players as “Haters” to hunt them down, with rewards in it for whichever player comes out on top. With this mechanic, the game actually sets players against each other. No doubt, this asynchronous multiplayer has driven its own share of player deaths.

The game ends up being a Hack and Slash twist on the Rogue-like genre, but it’s the free to play elements that make the game worth studying.

Let it Die takes a variety of mechanics from free to play games and adapts them to a console-sized game with varying degrees of success.

Unfortunately there are timers here, along with a convoluted currency system with three different kinds of currency, one of which you can purchase with real money. This currency is called Death Metals.

The developers frequently give them out for free, but the game is pretty much built to try and take Death Metals from unsuspecting players. Once they use the last of their free death metals is the point where many players will rightfully turn the game off and move on. For some, this is seen as an extra challenge that heightens the game to new levels of tension that cannot be felt in many other places.

Speaking as someone who beat the game, the money-grubbing aspect of Let it Die is probably what made it stick with me so long. That said, I can proudly say I beat all of the currently available campaign levels having only spent seven dollars, and that was by choice to support the developers for their work after the fact.

While there are undoubtably systems at work trying to squeeze money from the player, observant players who are willing to grind a bit can easily succeed by spending nothing at all.

Every death in the game presents the player with a few choices. The first choice is an obvious continue screen where the player can forfeit one Death Metal to keep going. Anyone who has beaten the game will tell you that this is an enormous waste and is almost never the right choice.

The game actually offers a couple of ways for players to retrieve their lost characters for free as well. You can either pay in-game money to retrieve your character or go back to that floor and kill the “Hater” your old character turned into when you died.

Despite the obvious caveats, Let it Die presents too many good ideas to be completely held down by its unfortunate business model.

Little stylistic flairs are saving graces. Like the game’s sprawling soundtrack that ranges from J-pop to Japanese Math Rock which the player explores by tuning in to different in-game radio stations. How Uncle Death, the game’s skateboarding skeleton mascot yells “SWEEEEET” through your controller when you brutally kill an enemy character. Or how satisfyingly fleshed out enemy bosses are by collectible comic book pages strewn throughout the tower that explain their backstory.

In the home base area you can also log out and go into your “real” body where your character is sitting across from Uncle Death playing Let it Die in an arcade. The “Hated Arcade” area is where you go to get quests and watch videos that build the lore around the NPC characters. You can also get tips from Meijin, an afro wearing character who brags that he’s beaten Let it Die multiple times already.

Let it Die is a prime example of a “live game.” The game is more of a continuous service, as the developers have continued to support it with free content to keep the player experience fresh. The game’s status as a “live game” is probably how the developers justify the free to play business model.

With the rise of mobile games, free to play and “live games” have grown into their own genre. Instead of charging twenty dollars for new DLC packs or “season passes” every couple months like most games do to drive sales, “live games” usually start free and contain mechanics built to raise money for development.

While it’s easy to point out these free to play mechanics as toxic, players already get shaken down by games they payed full price for at this point. It’s hard to say which business model is truly more toxic, but the fact that another model has arisen is a good sign that players will have more choice in the future.

More than hurt it, once I took the mental challenge to not spend a cent on the game, the free to play aspects just made the game tense.

In an interview with Gamespot back in 2004, legendary video game director Hideo Kojima said he wanted to make a video game where a player’s death resulted in the game disc destroying itself, rendering it unplayable. According to Kojima, this would lend a new level of gravitas to player death that he couldn’t manufacture, no matter how he scripted his games. Nothing would make a fight more harrowing than knowing that one wrong move could mean having to buy a new copy of the game to resume your progress.

Of course, for obvious reasons Kojima has never actually made a game like that. That said, Let it Die is about as close as a modern game has gotten to that model. Knowing one wrong move could send me back to my home base, stranding my character in the tower, made me sweat.