As DJ progresses through the levels, he’ll come across non-possessed students trapped in various boxes, barrels and, oddly enough, traffic cones. Rescuing these students, represented by the same girl and the same half-hooded, mutant pig-man, provides DJ with locker combinations. Transferring to locker room, via well spaced save points, allows DJ to rifle through the lockers of the rescued and discover weapon upgrades, new multiplayer game levels, health and confidence increases and new costumes and weapon skins. The inclusion of alternate weapons and costumes helps to break the monotony of the game, as it’s fun to have a zombie themed DJ fighting off enemies with a massive candy cane, however anything other than the default costumes causes the frame rate to slow to a crawl.

You can tell that the developers meant for DJ to backtrack through completed parts of the school, using new weapons and special moves to gain access to, and rescue more students, however with no map, and various instances of absolutely no direction whatsoever, navigating the world to complete the main story is an absolute chore, much less going through it again just to receive an upgrade for a useless weapon.

Once DJ finishes the main story, complete with a final boss who appears to be DJ’s uncle, but is given no back-story, no motivation and little else other than a rosy hue and a creepy trench coat, multiplayer modes are unlocked. These modes consist of a version of Breakout, and a free for all, combat/platforming game. Thankfully, no one else appears to be playing this game and further Death Jr. mediocrity, albeit of a multiplayer sort, was avoided.

In closing, Death Jr. and the Science Fair of Doom is a game that had a lot of good ideas, most of which ended up being abysmal when actually implemented. The DS already has a huge selection of well done platformers which makes it impossible to recommend this game to anyone. There’s no reason to fear this reaper, but no reason to hang out with him either.