Berserk or Die, a game that got shadowdropped during the PC Game Show, is a small little indie game that may cost you more than the price of admission: You’ve got to make sure your keyboard survives.
Indie games are a great way for developers to experiment with new control schemes or gameplay loops. If someone has a good idea and knows how to execute, they don’t need a huge budget to succeed. Just look at something like Balatro.
Vampire Survivors is also a massively influential indie game, one that created a simple gameplay loop that many devs have tried to copy and iterate upon. And it just so happens the same studio that made Vampire Survivors decided to fund and publish a new game: Berserk or Die.
The core concept is that you have to smash your keyboard to attack, with you doing more damage by pressing more keys. It’s a cheap game and a fun time – as long as your keyboard can handle it.
Berserk or Die is a keyboard durability test
When it comes to pretty much any game with melee combat, it’s easy to feel like pressing more buttons and pressing them fast increases your damage. In Berserk or Die, that’s actually true.
You have to attack to either the left or right of your keyboard, with the range of your attack increasing depending on how many keys you press at once. You also have to manage stamina by pressing space bar as you need it, and you can even whip your mouse around for a special attack specific to the character you’re playing.
This dev has essentially boiled their game down to four big buttons. You don’t even move your character, rather, they’re brought forward in a certain direction depending on which way you attack.
What’s more, it’s only $4 to get Berserk or Die, a similarly low price point to Vampire Survivors. At least, the game’s cheap if your keyboard makes it to the credits.
There’s also the off-chance that dedicated players discover some unique ways to press a ton of keys at once without jeopardizing their peripherals. Maybe just put your feet on the keyboard to get more surface area so you can free up your hands for the mouse to special attack? Maybe wear mittens so you can soften the blow and hit more keys at once?
Either way, with such a stellar concept, there’s a chance that Berserk or Die becomes one of 2025’s biggest indie hits.
