PixlBit

I’ve had some trouble sticking with Flipping Death. In between playing other games for review I slowly chipped away at it, making small progress over a pretty extended period of time. On the surface, I really love what it’s going for. This platforming-adventure has a great sense of humor, memorable characters, and a really neat and unique art style that absolutely leaves an impression. While all of the accoutrement is fantastic, solving puzzles and accomplishing tasks feels pretty consistently obtuse and rarely satisfying when you finally figure it all out.

To set the stage, you play as Penny, who has tragically and unexpectedly died. Upon showing up in the afterlife, Death is ready for a vacation on the moon and essentially forces Penny to take over for him. In her new role, she has the ability to possess the living, allowing her to quickly and easily jump between the now and the hereafter. Through possession of the living, she must solve both the living and the dead’s problems, which ultimately begins to unravel the circumstances of her death.

The experience is broken up into chapters and at the start of each, you need to work through the spirit world first to make your first entry into the world of the living. Possessing most of the living creatures requires a soul currency that can be found easily throughout the spirit world. There are spirits around as well that will help give you some purpose for the level. After talking with them you might be given a small nugget of information that you can work from to begin piecing together how to accomplish the mandatory objectives of the level. From there you’ll begin possessing creatures and inspecting their inner monologue and using their special “quirk” ability to see what they may be useful for. This ability can modify both the environment and affect other characters, so it’s generally how you’re solving puzzles.

To give a bit more context, an example is necessary. There are some spoilers in the given example, so if you want to go into Flipping Death without any knowledge of the puzzles, be sure to skip the next four paragraphs.

In one particular chapter, you’re given the task of putting out the fire on Vera the witch. As it turns out, being on fire makes it tough to concentrate and she can’t help Penny until it’s extinguished. I guess the fire isn’t too horrible, because you’ll spend close to an hour figuring out how to put the damn thing out. This involves possessing anything that you possibly can and talking to the other ghosts to try to get some clues as to how to proceed.

Now strap in, because the actual solution is more involved than anyone could have possible guessed. First, you need to possess a firefighter, then walk him to a random house, go inside and put out the fire in the fireplace. In the process of doing this, you’ll learn an interesting bit of information - he likes scary movies and is currently watching one involving a little demonic girl. Small details like this are almost always important and you’ll need to stash them away to help you progress later.

After you’ve put out the fire, back in the spirit world, there’s an enemy you need to lure to a certain point so it can be pulled into the world of the living, turning it into a bubble gum dispenser. Of course, someone needs to chew the bubble gum, so you’ll have to figure out who might, which turns out to be a girl who can bite things. Collecting the gum apparently enables her to blow bubbles and fly for short bursts, which will allow her to fly into the chimney thus covering her in soot. How is this related to putting out a spirit witch’s fire, you might ask? Hold on, we’ll get there.

Covering the little girl in soot makes her look like the monster from the horror movie. Heading back to the firehouse as the girl, you can go scare the firefighter to death, which makes him appear in the afterlife, thus allowing him to put out Vera’s fire. It’s almost impossible to know when you start that following these leads will actually result in accomplishing the task at hand. As it turns out, putting out Vera’s fire is only one of the mandatory objectives, with a slew of optional ones that further muddy the waters on how to progress.

As should be evident from the above example, you’ll sometimes need to take enormous mental leaps to arrive at the solutions to move forward. Many times because it was so unobvious, I found myself stumbling into the answer, which made “solving” the puzzle unsatisfying. Other times, even when I did sort it all out, it was a brute force exercise, also removing all of the satisfaction from the process. In almost all cases, by the time I figured it all out, I was just happy to be done and moving on.

Because the gameplay itself can often feel like a chore, it’s really the aforementioned character, charm, and art style that carries the experience. The story is also of interest and tracing the details of Penny’s death acts as another carrot to help drag you through the game’s eight chapters.

Controlling all of the action is yet another roadblock in enjoying Flipping Death. The quirk actions tied to the right stick are super awkward and sometimes require some really specific motions to achieve the desired goal. Furthermore, the buttons you use to perform actions never become second nature, because they break universal conventions, like hitting B to go back.

Despite all my frustration and the many glaring flaws of Flipping Death, I still find myself attracted to it. I love the world and the characters and the humor. It’s a fascinating place to be transported to and I only wish the core gameplay was of the same caliber.