The Upturned is a really odd game in one of the strangest and rarest genres, horror-comedy, that had great execution and grew on me a lot by the end of my experience. Made by Zeekerss during Covid right before he blew up with Lethal Company, I honestly think this game has more charm, heart and quite frankly is better. The gameplay loop is simple. You travel through an elevator stopping on floors as you move through a tower in the afterlife. On each floor there are funny shenanigans and voicecalls from Ik, the hotel manager, who guides you throughout the game. The primary objective always remains the same: find a fuse to bring back to the safety of the elevator and replace the old one with it to keep going towards your "luxury suite" on floor 1434. Through each floor the game does a great job of building tension and atmosphere before usually delivering a payoff (sometimes there are several or many enemies right off the bat) with a mad dash back to the elevator once you've retrieved the replacement fuse.
The Upturned slowly introduces you to more enemies, mechanics, and characters that inhabit the eerie world as you continue on your journey, providing a great variety that ensures the game stays fairly fresh throughout its relatively short runtime. Sometimes there's keys to find to unlock doors that let you progress further through the floor, or enemies to get past. There's too much to discover however, so I don't want to spoil it. The Upturned does a great job of balancing the fear, vibe and tension of a horror game with goofier comedic dialogue shared between you and Ik during phonecalls where you can choose the dialogue, and the funny animations and wacky sounds. From the pitter patter of your character's footsteps to the little dance he does when you arrive at each floor to the arcad-y almost Mario-esque way he leaps up when you retrieve the fuse, to perhaps the best detail - (the character always rips doors off their hinges instead of opening them, allowing you to carry it around and throw it) -- the game manages to stay humorous. On top of doing both of those elements really well, the game's story has some serious, intriguing and even heartfelt and contemplative conversions and dialogues between you and Ik. I think you'd call the music weird-core? -- I found it to be very fitting of the bizarre nature of The Upturned with several oddly catchy tunes.
The gameplay consists of puzzles, a lot of platforming and then one of the highlights of the gameplay (throwing objects around in the game's physics sandbox to knock out and kill most enemies, or to traverse across deadly waters. The final thing to note is the stylization of The Upturned. Everything from the music to the horror-comedy balance to the variety in gameplay and enjoyable narrative is quirky and oddball, but the game is nothing without the visuals that have become somewhat commonplace in the 2020s with devs looking for a cheap way to make their game look stylish while avoiding having it look like fake unreal crap like DayZ or some other ♥♥♥♥ that just looks like an asset flip. Despite the fact that the artstyle that The Upturned generally falls into has become mainstream and overdone, the characterization, level and character design, and way the artstyle even now still manages to stick out, are proof that this game really mastered the style.
The Upturned as a package delivers and delights, keeping you on your toes during an experience that includes a lot of different mechanics and surprisingly manages to balance them quite well. The two sides: tension and humor pulled me and dragged me through each of the floors of the hotel until I reached the end, and the phonecalls in the last few levels really made me feel even more for the game, so It's easy to recommend such a wonderfully equal parts uncomfortable and enjoyable surprise like this.
8/10
