So, you’re looking for a way to play or even just watch gameplay of that weird, beautiful strategy game from a decade ago. It’s a common itch. Where can you see Death Inc nowadays? Honestly, the answer is a bit of a heartbreaker for fans of British indie gaming history. If you go searching on Steam or the Epic Games Store right now, you’re going to hit a brick wall. It’s not there.
The game was a stylized, "business management" take on the Black Death, developed by Ambient Studios. These guys were industry veterans. We’re talking former Lionhead, Media Molecule, and Criterion developers. They had the pedigree. They had the art style—a sort of tilted, painterly 17th-century England that looked like a moving Dutch masterpiece. But the game effectively vanished into the "what could have been" pile of Kickstarter history.
The Short Answer on Where to Find It
You can't really "see" a live, playable version of the full game because it was never actually finished. Ambient Studios ran a Kickstarter campaign back in early 2013. They were looking for £300,000. They didn't get it. They only raised about a third of that.
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Despite the failed crowdfunding, they didn't give up immediately. They released an alpha build. You could actually buy into it for a while directly through their website. But then the studio shuttered. When a studio closes, their web servers usually go dark, and their direct-sales links break. Today, the only place you can really see Death Inc in action is through archived gameplay videos on YouTube or old press previews from sites like Rock Paper Shotgun and Eurogamer.
Why Everyone Was Obsessed With the Look
The game looked incredible. It wasn't just another grim-dark plague simulator. It had this cheeky, British sense of humor. You played as Grim T. Livingstone, a freelance reaper trying to start his own business.
Think about that for a second.
Instead of being a hero saving the world, you were a middle-manager of the afterlife. You had to spread the bubonic plague to increase your "harvest." The gameplay used a unique "paint" mechanic. You'd literally paint your path through the village to direct your minions. It felt fluid. It felt different. This is why people still ask where can you see Death Inc—the visual identity was so strong it stuck in the collective memory of the gaming community for over ten years.
The Alpha Build Artifacts
There was a playable alpha. I remember people downloading it and being blown away by the "rat swarm" mechanics. If you dig deep enough into abandonware forums or specific indie game archives, you might find those old alpha files. However, modern Windows 11 or macOS environments are notoriously prickly with unfinished code from 2013. You’d likely need a virtual machine or a very old laptop to get it running without it crashing every five minutes.
The Kickstarter Crash and Burn
Kickstarter in 2013 was the Wild West. For every Shovel Knight, there were ten projects that just couldn't find their footing. Death Inc was one of them. The developers were incredibly transparent. They posted updates. They showed off the "Sick-O-Meter." They explained how the economy of souls worked.
But £300,000 was a massive ask for a niche strategy game at that time. When the campaign failed, they tried a "pay what you want" model for the alpha to keep the lights on. It wasn't enough. By the end of 2013, Ambient Studios had to call it quits. It’s a classic story of high ambition meeting the cold reality of development costs.
Where to See Gameplay Today
Since you can't go buy it, your best bet for a hit of nostalgia is YouTube. Specifically, look for channels that focused on indie gems during the early 2010s.
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- TotalBiscuit: The late, great John Bain did a "WTF Is..." video on the Death Inc alpha. It’s probably the most comprehensive look at the mechanics that exists.
- Official Trailers: The original reveal trailers are still floating around. They show the gorgeous tilt-shift camera effect that made the world look like a miniature toy set.
- Archive.org: Sometimes, old game demos get uploaded here. It’s a legal gray area, but for a defunct studio, it’s often the only way to preserve the work.
The Legacy of Ambient Studios
Even though you can't easily see Death Inc anymore, the DNA of that game moved on. When Ambient Studios closed, those developers didn't just disappear. They went back into the ecosystem of UK game dev. You can see echoes of that "playful but dark" British aesthetic in games that came later.
The tragedy is that the game was actually fun. Usually, when a game fails its funding, it's because the idea is half-baked. Death Inc wasn't. It was polished, even in its early stages. It just arrived at a time when the market was becoming oversaturated with indie projects.
How to Track Down "Lost" Games Like This
If you're truly dedicated to finding a copy, you have to look at the community. Discord servers dedicated to "Lost Media" or "Abandonware" are your best friends. There are people who hoard old installers specifically so they don't vanish from history.
- Check the BlueMaxima's Flashpoint or similar preservation projects. While primarily for web games, they sometimes branch out.
- Search for the original installer name. Sometimes the file
DeathIncAlpha.exe(or similar) is mirrored on obscure cloud drives. - Look at the Wayback Machine. Sometimes the "Download" buttons on the old Ambient Studios site actually captured the file location before it went dead.
Is There a Spiritual Successor?
Not really. Many games have tried the "Reaper" theme—Death and Taxes or Have a Nice Death come to mind—but they don't have that specific RTS-meets-painting-mechanic that Death Inc boasted. It remains a unique moment in time.
If you are a developer or a student of game design, studying the failure of Death Inc is actually more valuable than playing most finished games. It shows how a "perfect" pitch and "perfect" art can still fail if the timing or the funding platform isn't exactly right. It’s a lesson in the volatility of the mid-tier indie market.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you’re desperate for that vibe, stop searching for a playable download for a moment. Instead, go to YouTube and watch the 15-minute gameplay walkthroughs. It’ll give you that hit of nostalgia without the headache of trying to fix DLL errors on an unfinished build from 2013.
The most actionable thing for a fan of "lost" games is to support current developers who are pushing boundaries. Games like Manor Lords or Frostpunk carry that same heavy atmosphere and management depth, even if they aren't about spreading the plague in 1660s London.
Final Reality Check
Don't fall for sites claiming they have a "full version" of Death Inc for download. They are almost certainly malware. Because the game was never finished, a "full version" literally does not exist. If a site is promising you the complete experience, they are lying. Stick to the reputable archives and video platforms. It sucks that such a creative project hit a dead end, but that’s the nature of the industry sometimes. The best we can do is remember the art style and the risk those developers took.
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To see the remains of the project, your first stop should be the Internet Archive to look at the old Ambient Studios blog posts. It gives you a much better sense of what they were trying to build than any third-party article ever could. Seek out those original dev logs; they're a masterclass in transparent game development, even if the ending wasn't a happy one.