is a role-playing video game developed by Pyramid and originally released for the DoCoMO mobile service in December 2007.

The concept of Hero Must Die was developed by its scenario writer and designer Shoji Masuda based on his experiences of watching his father deteriorate from cirrhosis.

[1][2] As time progresses in-game, the hero's stats gradually decrease until he "dies" at the end of the game, and some effects include forgetting abilities.

All environments and characters are rendered in 3D, and at the end of each five day cycle, the player can save their progress and transfer data across to a new game.

Depending on the players actions, differing numbers of people attend the hero's funeral, offering varying elegies.

These experiences formed the core concepts for Hero Must Die: its main theme was choosing what to do within a limited amount of time.

[8] Another element was the hero giving gifts to people in need to his own detriment, a theme compared by Masuda to "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde.

[5] The music was composed by Kenji Ito, whose previous work included scoring for games in the Mana and SaGa series.

[12] While he had arranged some of his previous pieces for mobile devices as ringtones, the majority of his recent work to that point was for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS.

[14] According to Masuda, the "Director's Cut" added more content and better balanced aspects of the gameplay and story, while being available for a lower price than earlier versions.

Developed by Pyramid and published by Nippon Ichi Software, Masuda returned to design and write the game, along with handling general planning.

Criticism was laid towards elements of its time system and the fact that there was no impact on future playthroughs based on players' actions.

[2] RPGamer, in a piece about the remake's announcement, said that the game had "incredible" replay value and positively said Hero Must Die was an "odd enough duck".

[15] In its review of the Vita version, Famitsu praised the game's mechanics, favorably comparing it to Masuda's work on Linda Cube and Oreshika, and generally enjoyed the replay value.

Criticism was given to the inability to speed up dialogue and battle times, elements of trial and error in early stages, and some of the choices given to the player being too harsh.