Flipping Death is a game from the creators of Stick it to the Man! As a result, it has a very similar artstyle, set in a 3D world with paper cutout characters and environments. It looks pretty neat and gives it a distinctive visual identity. The gameplay loop is similar to the developer’s previous game in that you will be placed in a chapter, free to explore. You can only progress by helping characters and these often aren’t immediately obvious or make the most sense.
The story focuses on Penny, who ends up dying in an accidental (but stupid) death. She gets mistaken for the temp in the afterworld and ends up becoming Death after the real Death went off on a vacation. She gains his scythe and sets off in her new job. This is the gimmick of the game, Penny is able to roam the afterworld, or possess a living being and jump back into the living world.
In order to possess a living being, Penny needs to spend the ghost currency which can be obtained (unlimitedly) in the afterworld. Once she jumps into the living world, she can read the mind of the character she had possessed, as well as control them to assist in her missions. As the afterworld has several characters who had unfinished business, Penny can use her unique ability to jump to the living world and do a few things that would affect the afterworld.
As mentioned earlier, the causality can be hard to fathom at times. There are a series of great hints which uses pictures to guide the player if they are stuck. Despite that, the lack of an objective marker (apart from specific important items) will mean that the player will spend most of their time in the game running around. In the afterworld, Penny is able to jump and use her scythe to warp a short distance. This is neat although her jumps can be a bit floaty which makes some of the light platforming annoying. In the living world, mobility is a bit more restricted and so these characters rely on strategically placed elevators in order to move to higher levels.
Each chapter has a set of optional challenges but apart from the title, you aren’t given any further detail on what they involve. While trial and error can be part of the fun, the game hides too much that a player will just as likely (if not more so) ignore it. There are some good quality of life elements such as the ability to pull up a map and then instantly teleport to any of the characters you had already interacted with. It makes traversing the long map much quicker and a lot more bearable.
The charm of the game comes from its characters. All the characters often have an unusual personality and once you possess them, will spout out some great dialogue. Characters also have their own unique abilities including flying, shooting and licking. It sounds weird but it makes sense in context and this adds variety into the game. Controls are not the best, can be finicky and cumbersome. The use of right stick in activating the abilities not the best control scheme decision. This can be annoying and unsure why it couldn’t use a face button considering so many of them are unused. This makes several of the optional challenges much more challenging that it should be as you wrestle with the controls.
The whole game is mainly based on two locations, although there are some variations each time (such as time of day or overlaying skins). While it takes a bit of time to familiarize yourself with it in the beginning so that in later chapters, it is helpful to know exactly how to traverse, it’s still a bit of a shame that there aren’t any more new locations. This is a short game and the core content really only takes around four to seven hours to complete. Due to the vague objectives and unorthodox solutions, if you play through the game blind it’ll take a bit more. The story ends up pretty average in the end, only held up by several funny dialogues. The wacky characters keep it interesting, from skeletons to whales to mermaids, there is nothing the game isn’t afraid to do.
Overall, Flipping Death can be fun, and it is fun a lot of the times. However, it is marred by vague progression objectives and clunky controls that can be frustrating. The fact is that it had no reason to be like this but it seemed more like it a design choice instead. As it is, this is like a more polished version of Stick it to the Man! in its gameplay design.
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