Earth Must Die chat with Dan Marshall

• Interviews by Laura Cress
• Published:

Dan Marshall (Ben There, Dan That / Lair of the Clockwork God) is no stranger to comedy. His previous point-and-click adventure games with writer and designer Ben Ward are full of quirky, witty moments and lots of good 'ol Bri'ish humour. For his latest game, Earth Must Die, the pair are going even one step further and adding voice acting to the mix, with a cast of what can only be described as British comedy royalty: Alex Horne (host of British comedy panel game show Taskmaster), plus actors Tamsin Greig, Ben Starr, Joel Fry, Matthew Holness, Don Warrington, Sally Beaumont, Alasdair Beckett-King and many many more!

I caught up with Dan following the cast announcement to learn more about just how he managed to cast all of these funny, funny people – and also, shockingly, to find out about the game itself! Intriguingly, Dan and his team at Size Five Games have decided to do away with the inventory system of many other traditional adventure games altogether and make it much more about the dialogue and humour. It all makes sense with the story, which sees you play as VValak Lizardtongue, a sort of useless but backstabbing dictator who accidentally rises to power after his homeland, the Tyrythian Empire, is attacked by Earth and everyone else in the line of power dies. 

Seeking to take revenge on the Terranoids of Earth, VValak has a slight problem in that he doesn't like touching anything (well he is royalty), so the gameplay will consist of manipulating people through dialogue choices to do your bidding for you rather than picking up and combining things. Whilst that means lots of dialogue choices, Dan told me he has strong opinions about branching narratives (namely that the majority of gamers rarely replay things so they're a waste of time/money), so expect a singular, undoubtedly very funny and very well-written, story instead of one with many branching paths.

There's no news on a definite release date yet but you can find out more about the game and its jolly funny cast in the chat below:   

Links

• AGH Network