Hi, I’m Ryan! I’m a comedy writer, the author behind the webcomic “Dinosaur Comics,” two choose-your-own-path versions of Shakespeare, “Squirrel Girl” for Marvel Comics, and more to the point: Flipping Death, the super rad new platformer puzzle adventure from Zoink Games, available now on Xbox One!
Writing a game isn’t like writing in other mediums. In comics, you control the whole page: who’s saying what, to whom, and when – plus you control the pacing, too – which includes the size of the panels, their number, and their order. It’s like being the director, actor, and writer all at the same time, and it gives you full control over a joke. But in games you don’t control any of that! Outside of cutscenes – which we all want to keep as short as possible – all you can influence is what’s said to the player, and the player determines what happens next. And this makes comedy really hard!
But not in Flipping Death.
In Flipping Death, you play as Penny, a woman who dies under mysterious circumstances only to find herself pushed into service as Death’s temp, filling in for him while he goes on vacation. With her new job, Penny gains some new powers – including the power to literally flip the world, to reveal lies on unseen the other side. On the ghost side, the focus is on this really fun platforming. On the living side, the focus is on clever puzzle-solving, and they mix in some really clever ways. But how does Penny interact with the living?
She possesses them and takes over their bodies, of course!
That’s what makes writing comedy for Flipping Death work so well. Rather than fighting the player, trying to get them to listen to your jokes as they go through the game, in Flipping Death you and the player are working together. With every living character she possesses, Penny enters a new world, a new personality with its own hopes, dreams, wants, and needs. Figure those out, and you can use them to help ghosts on the other side reach their eternal reward. Mess up, and you may doom an entire community of spirits… to a fate worse than death. And you may never solve the mystery of your own sudden trip to the other side!
It’s a twisted, colorful world brought to life with beautiful, hilarious hand-drawn art, and I’m so pleased – and so proud – with how it turned out. You’ll explore a world filled with interesting characters and hilarious secrets. Then you’ll flip it over, and explore a whole new world, one populated with ghosts, monsters, and demons, all with their own different personalities. It’s fun, it’s hysterical, it’s clever, and I really think you’ll love it. If you played the earlier game Zoink and I made together, Stick it To The Man!, then you’ll remember how that in that game, you could read minds.
In this game, you control them.
I can’t wait for you to play Flipping Death. It’s out now on Xbox One and I really hope you check it out!
See the rest of the story on Xbox Wire
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Source: Xbox Blog
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