Draft:The Upturned
 | Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take 2 months or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 2,410 pending submissions waiting for review.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Reviewer tools
|
| The Upturned | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Zeekerss |
| Publisher(s) | Zeekerss |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | March 23, 2022 |
| Genre(s) | Comedy horror |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Upturned is a comedy horror[1] video game developed and published by Zeekerss. It was released on Steam and itch.io on March 23, 2022, to a small audience[1] but gained more attention following the release and commercial success of Lethal Company by the same developer.[2]
The game follows the perspective of a nondescript, shadowy character, currently in the afterlife, who is forced to navigate through the different floors of the Upturned Inn while trying to reach their room on floor 1434, often having to contend with different creatures residing in the inn in the process.[1] The hotel was founded by a character named Ik, who frequently calls the player to try to assist them or to engage in conversation. The game maintains a comedic tone throughout, using multiple different types of comedy to create humor, though still using elements of horror to create fear and stressful situations.
Gameplay
[edit]The Upturned's gameplay has a mix of puzzles, platforming, chases, and combat.[3] It features a physics-based system that allows the player to pick up and throw nearly every object they find, a mechanic that is used predominantly in the game's puzzles and combat, having players throw objects to damage or stun enemies and activate buttons, or strategically place them to climb on.[3] It also features multitude of different chaotic levels composed of many unique settings.[1][4]
Its main gameplay loop is composed of exiting the elevator when it breaks down to search different floors for a new fuse, fighting or running from monsters and solving puzzles in the process.[1][3] The Upturned also gives a lot of importance to character interactions, with conversations or dialogue occurring periodically throughout nearly every level of the game, prompting the player to pick different dialogue options that alter responses and sometimes gameplay.[1] The game includes many comedic elements alongside its horror mechanics, with dialogue often including surreal humor, with other types of comedy such as slapstick humor and visual gags being present outside of dialogue.
Plot
[edit]The Upturned begins with the protagonist entering the afterlife and heading to the Upturned Inn, appearing from the outside to be a towering skyscraper. Inside, they meet Ik, the inn's founder and manager, who directs them to a reservation on floor 1434. The protagonist soon discovers the inn's elevator is malfunctioning, requiring them to find new fuses throughout the inn’s many floors while contending with monstrous creatures roaming the inn's halls. Throughout the different levels, they have regular phone calls with Ik, and a storm begins and rages on outside, inadvertently reminding Ik of his death, causing the protagonist to mention they are unaware of their cause of death. This leads Ik to seek access to the Complete Historic Database, a record of the entire universe.
After several failed attempts to obtain it, a bird-dog hybrid that breaks through the lobby's window causes Ik to hide, interrupting his periodic conversations with the protagonist, though it is later revealed to have delivered the Complete Historic Database. After preparing it for use, Ik begins to read Earth's history after his death in 1996, learning that after a global pandemic in 2020, all nations came together, achieved world peace, and ended world hunger. Throughout further years, advancements were made such as fusion-powered vehicles, human teleportation, and advanced gene modification. As the protagonist explores the many different levels, they also start getting periodic calls from an unknown character offering cryptic messages, insults, and sometimes guidance. They also learn from Ik that all beings in the afterlife are made of ash.
On floor 396, a character called Fat Pajama Man breaks into the elevator, causing it to malfunction and fall down miles. After this fall, the protagonist wakes up on floor 1397, causing Ik to reluctantly reveal that the Upturned Inn's structure goes down instead of up, the skyscraper-like building on top being completely hollow. Ik later explains that in April of 2037, the human race became aware of a massive meteor on a collision course with Earth, so they constructed a mega-nuke named Big Boi to destroy it. However, a series of worldwide catastrophic events occurred in tandem, culminating in the explosion of Big Boi, which triggered an apocalyptic scenario.
Ik later shares the details of his own death, recounting how he was kicked out of his father's truck on a mountain as dark clouds soon rolled in. An unknown semi-truck driver eventually pulled over next to him and pointed a shotgun directly at him, only for Ik to be abruptly crushed by a falling tree. Soon after, Ik tells the story of how the protagonist died, revealing that humanity survived the previous events in a network of bunkers and planned to rebuild Big Boi. However, a super-sized meteor then hit Earth a year ahead of schedule, as it turned out there was another mega-meteor approaching Earth from a different direction. The protagonist, one of the few humans left alive, survived alone in their bunker home for over a year until they met an abrupt end while sleeping due to spontaneous combustion, stated by Ik to be caused by "the whim of chemistry and chance".[5]
After losing contact with Ik, the protagonist reaches their room but is trapped inside. There, the unknown character, revealed to be called Mr. Sob, discloses that he is the true owner of the hotel, explaining that he had made a deal with Ik to make his hotel eternal in exchange for ownership. After the deal went through, Mr. Sob began turning all the normal guests that arrived into the monsters now seen in the hotel, now planning to similarly kill and transform the protagonist. However, the incinerators in their room malfunction, and the protagonist survives and escapes to the elevator. As they ascend, Mr. Sob attempts to convince them to return to their room. He then comments on his inability to fully kill those in the afterlife, culminating in his face being revealed to be a bare, jagged skull with white glowing eyes as he goes on a paranoid existentialist rant, ending as the elevator reaches the surface.
Finding the lobby empty, the protagonist goes outside and soon gets a phone call from Ik, who confesses that after giving ownership to Mr. Sob, he had been pretending that the Upturned Inn was still a normal hotel. Ik reveals the final humans have died, soon saying goodbye to the protagonist as he encounters something incredibly bright. After slowly wandering through the forest, a radiant light appears in front of the protagonist as a figure on horseback approaches, a strong flame-laced wind suddenly emanating from its position. The protagonist, ash from their body crumbling away, is seen struggling against the wind towards the horseman until the screen cuts to black, marking the end of the game.
Reception
[edit]The Upturned received generally positive reviews from critics, with many reviewers praising the game for its use of humor and horror together.[1][3][4] Joel Couture of Indie Games Plus stated "The Upturned will have you screaming with laughter and terror – sometimes at the same time. It’s a wild horror experience that continually rewards you for all the time you spend playing it".[4] Dan Morris of Fearzine Magazine said "The Upturned will make you laugh as you run in terror and frantically throwing everything in reach at monsters in the hopes of surviving. ".[3] Russell Adderson of PC Gamer described the experience of The Upturned as "Running for my life down a dim and cluttered hotel hallway, I'm laughing my head off".[1]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h Adderson, Russell (2022-09-13). "This weird comedy horror game from March went mostly unnoticed". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
- ^ Rigney, Ryan K. (2024-01-19). "The 10-Year Journey Behind Lethal Company's Success". Push to Talk. Retrieved 2025-02-22.
- ^ a b c d e Morris, Dan (2022-09-12). "The Upturned Review". Fearzine Magazine. Retrieved 2025-02-07.
- ^ a b c Couture, Joel (2022-04-07). "'The Upturned' - A Horrifying, Humorous Search for Your Hotel Room". Indie Games Plus. Retrieved 2025-02-03.
- ^ Zeekerss (2022-03-23). The Upturned (PC). Level/area: Floor 1434.
Ik: Then, you died. Do you want me to tell you [how]? [...] It was... Spontaneous combustion. Sorry, sir. While you slept, you caught on fire at the whim of chemistry and chance. But hey! On the bright side, you didn't do anything wrong.