Earth Must Die was one of the stand-out premieres in yesterday’s PC Gaming Show. The cartoon-styled space romp shone with crisp and vibrant visuals, and boasted a cast list that read like a who’s-who of British comedy.
Starring in it are Joel Fry (Game of Thrones, Dr Who, Our Flag Means Death), Ben Starr (Expedition 33, Final Fantasy 16), Martha Howe-Douglas (co-creator of Ghosts), Alex Horne (Taskmaster), Mike Wozniak (Man Down, Taskmaster, Three Bean Salad podcast), Don Warrington (Rising Damp!), Matthew Holness (Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace), Tamsin Greig (Black Books, Green Wing!), and Stevie Martin, Julie Nolke, Sophie Duker, Emma Fryer, Alasdair Beckett-King, Rosie Holt, Jon Blyth, Sam O’Leary, Tom Lawrinson, Sally Beaumont, David Montieth and Inel Tomlinson.
Yes, that’s Jon Blyth who once contributed to Eurogamer, which I’m sure is the accolade he shares and not his recent BAFTA-nominated performance in Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Earth Must Die looks great.Watch on YouTube
An eye-catching trailer and an eye-catching cast list, but details about the actual game were relatively scarce. What actually is Earth Must Die, then, and when is it coming out? Having talked to the game’s creator Dan Marshall today, I know some of the answers.
Earth Must Die, like many of Size Five’s games (that’s Marshall’s studio name), is a point-and-click adventure. And like many of Size Five’s games, it comes with a twist. “The idea is it’s a point-and-click adventure game but the lead character refuses to touch anything,” Marshall tells me. “He’s above it; because he’s from land-owning gentry, he won’t press buttons. So the game is a… conversation-’em-up. That’s not a real word is it?
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“But it’s not like Monkey Island where you can constantly replay conversations until you get the right stuff. Conversations play through, and you choose how much of a dick you’re going to be [I’ll come back to this point], and puzzle solving is more about manipulating other people into doing what you want to achieve rather than you actually doing it. So it’s more about ordering other people around to do things, rather than picking stuff up and having your own inventory.”
Indeed, Earth Must Die doesn’t have an inventory, so you can’t touch anything or pick anything up, or keep anything with you. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an adventure/point-and-click game having done that before.
To come back to the “choose how much of a dick you’re going to be” point earlier: Earth Must Die is also a game about a baddie. A proper baddie. Not a baddie who secretly wants to be good.
Says Marshall: “What they do in games quite often, or in Despicable Me or Star Wars or whatever, is they go ‘this time you’re going to play as one of the people in the Empire’, and they chicken out about a third of the way through and you defect to the Rebel side. And actually [the character is] a goodie because playing a baddie all the way through is slightly irksome.
“We’ve worked out ways of balancing [Valak’s] story so that he’s just a dick – he’s a fascist dictator bellend. I won’t mince my words! But he’s not the hero of the story. But you do get to play him and choose his dialogue options and all the rest of it, while the world crumbles around him.”
Valak is the lead, then, a Ming the Merciless-like character in charge of a vast alien empire who one day discovers Earth and an empire better organised than his. “So it’s basically: you’re this Ming the Merciless character with your 1950s wobbly sets, and then the Empire from Star Wars turns up and invades and takes over and rolls you into their much better empire. So that leaves you in the slightly awkward position of becoming the de facto Rebel leader for your [rebellion],” Marshall says.
I think it sounds great, and if Size Five’s last game Lair of the Clockwork God is anything to go by, there’s every chance it will be (I wish I’d been bold enough to give that game five stars; don’t tell Chris Tapsell I said that). But when is Earth Must Die coming out?
One of the upsides of holding back a reveal until the vocal parts have been recorded is the game’s nearly done. As in, there’s an outside chance Earth Must Die could even release this year, publisher No More Robots told me today. It’s a very tentative aim, so bear that in mind, but it could happen. And if it doesn’t, a 2026 release presumably won’t be far behind.
Incidentally, I was delighted to host Dan Marshall and writing and design partner Ben Ward (the Ben of ‘Ben and Dan’) on the interview podcast I ran a few years ago, and I don’t think any guests made me laugh harder.