Earth Must Die review

• Reviews by Sam Amiotte-Beaulieu
• Published:

This ludicrously fun galactic comedy adventure rules! (With an iron fist.)

Who would’ve guessed that being the head of a vast intergalactic dictatorship would be so tough? One day you’re on top of the world (literally) with godlike planet-destroying uber authority, and the next you’re the puppet ruler under another equally vast (but not nearly as cool or well-dressed) imperial dictatorship of hairless apes. Thankfully, as the Grand Shepherd of the Tyrythian Ascendancy, you’ve got plenty of tricks up your sleeve to bring about revenge on your conquerors’ pathetic excuse for a species. Earth Must Die is a delightfully bonkers adventure game where you play as an objectively terrible person who must overcome increasingly absurd obstacles through manipulating the other outlandish inhabitants of your cartoon world into doing your bidding. It’s violent, positively pulsating with low-brow adult humor, and above all else an absolute blast to play. 

Developer Size Five Games is best known for its acclaimed Ben and Dan series, but there’s no sign of the spindly-legged London roommates here. Earth Must Die is the story of VValak Lizardtongue, undisputed ruler of the Tyrythian galactic empire (along with his only friend, the childhood nursing robot Milky who somehow gained sentience). After inheriting the throne from his father through a dubious line of succession, VValak runs the supply lines dry of the backbone of Tyrythian economy: fabriconium. As everything runs on the stuff, it’s rather important to find a new source. The problem is that fabriconium is made from turning planets of a specific geological make-up into goo, and the empire has run out of planets to gooify in their scannable area of the universe. That is, other than one sector that has been forbidden to invade through the ages by generations of Grand Shepherds for mysterious reasons.

Refusing to pay heed to cryptic warnings about space zombies and doom, VValak heroically demands a scouting mission be sent out to determine if one of the planets in this forbidden zone can be harvested. Upon approaching the planet Earth, the scouts confirm it is a prime target. Unfortunately, soon after this transmission reaches VValak, distress calls erupt as the scouts are mercilessly shot down and overrun by an armada unlike anything Tyryth has ever seen. Before long, the humans (now calling themselves the Terranoid Empire after spreading from Earth and extending amongst the stars) invade VValak’s home world in astonishing numbers, overthrowing him and placing him under their watch as a puppet ruler, emperor in name only. Now VValak must use his cunning and many years of experience of bossing other people around to bring down the Terranoids and re-establish his own tyrannical rule.

At its core, Earth Must Die is a third-person point-and-click adventure game where you solve puzzles to progress. The game is controlled through a mouse and keyboard (or gamepad) interface. Rather than pure point-and-click, you move VValak through scrolling screens with WASD inputs in any direction (with the ability to speed up slightly while holding down the shift key) while your mouse highlights interactive points of interest in the environment. Hotspots are indicated by a sort of dark reddish-black cloud that materializes when your cursor gets near, and includes a short description of that person or object. Clicking a hotspot will open up a little interaction menu with animated icons denoting the options to examine, talk to, or order, though not all icons are available for all hotspots. The first two icons are self-explanatory, but the order icon is where this game shakes things up.

Early on, when VValak is told by his impaled dying father (and then-current Grand Shepherd) Quintarian Tankheart to summon his brothers to inherit the throne, his father is horrified to see VValak attempting to press a button rather than use voice commands or get someone else to do it. (As Quintarian explains, “poor people might have touched it.”) This hands-off philosophy extends through the entire game, as VValak will never use an item directly, as befits a stuck-up regal blue-skinned alien who never directly interacts with the environment himself. Instead, you have to order the weak-minded simpletons around you to do your bidding for you. Some characters will follow orders right away – Milky is programmed to, so she’ll do whatever you need her to do – but others will need to be convinced or persuaded before they’ll follow the whims of their mighty Grand Shepherd. 

In most situations with someone reluctant to follow VValak’s orders, you must first talk to that character and select certain dialogue options to gain their compliance. In these cases, though, it’s less about making the right call to convince someone of your undisputed authority and more about exhausting dialogue tree options until you choose the one that enables you to push them around. Don’t get me wrong – the writing is fantastic and filled with chuckle-inspiring lines that make it worth devouring every scrap of conversation the game has to offer. It just would have been nice to have to strategize responses as an additional layer of puzzle solving, rather than checking off boxes of available choices. There are some puzzles later in the game that require you to convince multiple characters in a specific sequence, but this isn’t particularly common otherwise.

Once you have a pliable subject, the order function acts as an extension of your will. VValak can tell characters to pick something up, move somewhere, brutally murder someone in cold blood – you know, typical adventure game stuff. When issuing a command, you have to first click on who or what you’re giving the order to, then click on the corresponding hotspot you are instructing them to act on. Some puzzles need you to talk with certain characters (or objects) in the environment while ordering others around at the same time, which is often weirder than it sounds. For example, one requires you to first talk to a voice-activated pendulum and then issue commands to an easily distracted snake. 

In some particularly complicated scenarios that have you balancing talking and giving orders to multiple characters moving around at the same time, it can be difficult to differentiate between hotspots and click between them. There are some time-based situations where this is particularly egregious, but there are no deaths (at least, not yours) or fail states to speak of, so it’s usually just a matter of repeating the sequence of events to get back to where you were before time ran out. There’s no manual save option, but the game records your progress whenever you enter a new location, so you can easily quit and reload any time. 

Earth Must Die

Genre:	Comedy, Science Fiction
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D
Theme:	Futuristic, Other worlds/dimensions, Antihero, Aliens
Perspective:	Third-Person
Gameplay:	Puzzle, Quest
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Medium
Graphic Style:	Cartoon

With the variety of scenarios you deal with as the Grand Shepherd, half the fun of Earth Must Die is seeing what sort of depraved insane situation the developers will throw at you next. During the roughly eight hours it took for me to finish the game, I convinced a crew of spacefaring humans to fly directly into the sun, helped a monotone bulky extraterrestrial gain access to an alien orgy (yes, really), participated in a high-speed train chase after engaging in a heist, and created an entire micro-civilization whose sole purpose was to fix a connection in a large red button. And this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the zany predicaments VValak and Milky find themselves in, and it’s a pleasure to experience everything on offer.

While it’s all largely linear and takes place over eight chapters, you do have some choice when it comes to where VValak goes next. There is a gorgeous world map of Tyryth from which you are able to select your destination at set points. While not used extensively, it gives a deeper sense of the impressive lore and world-building behind this story. Adding further to this is Milky’s humorously named “Milkipedia,” where she chronicles many details about this crazy universe. The number of full write-ups for the various characters, historical figures, creatures, and locations you encounter is significantly denser than I had anticipated in a game with comedy as its main focus. 

Not only does the game provide interesting background for the events you’re dealing with, there are also several puzzles that require you to specifically look up information on a character or location in order to gain insight into them. One instance requires you to look up some rebels you’re aiming to recruit for a heist, and you must determine what to say that will convince them to join up. Not all entries in the Milkipedia are strictly needed to move the story along; I learned all about the colossal dinosaur-like, town-carrying “tronks” just because I wanted to while I was stuck on one’s back and trying to figure out a way down (even though their database entry had nothing to do with the puzzle solution).

Whenever a puzzle requires you to consult her Milkipedia, Milky will typically remark that VValak should check to see if there’s an entry available, and VValak will respond with some sort of dismissive line about hating reading. Once you have found the info needed for a certain scenario, VValak will usually comment about how the details you found will be useful when speaking with the specific individual. This is an incredibly helpful hint when you have look through the Milkipedia to progress, preventing you from having from having to pore over the entire database in order to find one specific piece of information. 

I can’t blame anyone for wanting to keep the game moving along rather than stopping to read more, because Earth Must Die is a gorgeous cartoon spectacle. The world is bright and colorful, which contrasts hilariously with the over-the-top violence and adult subject matter. The art style is hugely evocative of the works of Genndy Tartakovsky, especially his work on Samurai Jack (which happens to be one of my childhood favorites). Alien architecture is purposefully jagged and imposing on The Spire where VValak overlooks his subjects of Tyryth, while there’s a sleek metallic, cold sheen to the interiors of the buildings and ships the Terranoids inhabit that reflect the authoritarian rule of their emperor’s tastes. The palette of colors on display offers lots of variety. The capital city on Tyryth is adorned in golden-yellow luxury with lime green windows mixed in, along with an oragne-red sky that gives off a suitably otherworldly feel. The aptly named “Microworld” is awash with neon pink, against a backdrop of purple and blue hues.

Slick animation works in tandem with the cornucopia of color. VValak constantly keeps his hands folded in front of him, but when standing idly he will tap his pointer fingers together impatiently. Some characters will float around with their arms trailing behind them, such as huge vampire mosquito mobsters that give VValak a hard time. Spaceships zip through beautiful cosmic backgrounds, including a rather unfortunate vessel that humorously rockets towards an unwelcoming flaming sun. There are tons of little moving details in the environments as you explore the world around you: gardens are filled with blinking eyes in the shadows and dangerous-looking plants with munching maws, while dungeon pits are filled with snakes writing around their unfortunate victims.

Character models are all incredibly expressive and equally diverse as well. Some are literal piles of flesh with a single mouth, while others are squid-like with multiple tentacles moving about as they get from one place to another. VValak looks like a rejected Flash Gordon villain, complete with spiked black hair and a lanky frame adorned in a long regal red robe that hides his feet whilst he shuffles about with his eyes darting around. Milky is a small floating android with two long dangly arms, the majority of her body comprised of a literal jar of milk, plus a nipple nozzle for drinking said milk. VValak and Milky in particular have a huge variety of facial expressions and poses that add an additional layer to their personalities and moods, and it was a delight to watch them articulate their lines.

Speaking of lines, the voice cast of Earth Must Die is spectacular. Joel Fry is an absolute riot as VValak, giving an over-the-top evil villain performance with an accent reminiscent of Vincent Price but somehow even more campy and hilarious. Martha Howe-Douglas gives an equally incredible performance as Milky, offering a more grounded voice of reason to contrast VValak’s terribleness. The entire cast brings their A-game, and everyone you meet is highly entertaining to interact with. The music is equally top-notch, with a cinematic sci-fi score that makes the entire experience feel grand and expansive. Sound effects are just as immersive, ranging from explosive bangs when you’re being mowed down by a flying drone to horrific squelches as a large anteater-like creature mixes cocktails and spews them out of an unspeakable orifice.

As whimsical as it all looks and sounds, this is not a game for those with weak stomachs, a dislike of strong language or an aversion to overtly graphical imagery. Earth Must Die revels in seeing how far it can push its adult content, with a dying Quintarian Tankheart’s intestines dribbling out of his wound, plenty of alien dick jokes and sexual innuendo throughout. There’s one section where VValak has to bumble his way through an erotic phone conversation to get an access code for a safe, and you have to visit a microscopic sex shop in order to track down a missing tiny person. It’s rare for conversations to not include at least one expletive, with VValak’s favorite four-word descriptor used frequently. I personally found it funny, but fair warning that the game’s vulgarity makes it anything but a Saturday morning cartoon. 

By the end of my time with Earth Must Die, I was impressed by how expansive the story felt, covering multiple arcs from bamboozling yourself into becoming Grand Shepherd, to undertaking multiple missions to gain the upper hand against the invading Terranoids, with highly varied goals across different time periods spanning several centuries. And in a game so clearly (and successfully) devoted to eliciting laughs, I was genuinely surprised by an ending that made me a tad emotional with how it all wraps up. I really came to love all the characters and craziness they got up to, and I have no doubt that I’ll be playing through their hijinks again at some point just to revisit the insane world they inhabit.

Final Verdict

Earth Must Die is a crass and violent adult cartoon adventure that is a blast to play. Like some kind of weird space onion, each layer peels back new oddball character interactions and set pieces that never let up. The puzzles aren’t overly complicated, but they put the unique, hands-off command-based system to good use in some fun and often hilarious ways. The game pays homage to the classic adventures that came before it (there’s a literal beat-for-beat quotation of a certain purple tentacle from a side character), while using new mechanics and a seemingly limitless amount of creativity to churn out fresh (and often amusingly horrific) ideas. This is the perfect game for the connoisseurs of a highly specific type of degeneracy looking for an adventure game oozing with style. Naturally, I loved it.

Sam played Earth Must Die on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.