Video Game / The Upturned

Have a nice night!

"Ah! You already have a reservation! I should have known you did, because everyone does."

— Ik

The Upturned is a action platformer game developed by Zeekerss. The game mixes survival horror with comedy in part due to its main mechanic of grabbing and throwing everything you can get your hands on. You are Mr. -- ---, the latest tenant in the Upturned Inn, a hotel for the dead run by the eccentric Ik. Luckily for you, you have a luxury suite at room 1434...but unfortunately, thanks to the terrible storm outside, the elevator keeps losing power, forcing you to go out into other rooms in the hotel to find replacement fuse boxes. And as you explore the hotel, it becomes more and more clear that not everything is what it seems. And that's not even mentioning the biggest mystery of all - just how exactly did you die?

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The Upturned contains examples of:

• 13 Is Unlucky: Floor 13 is the first floor you visit in the game and it is filled with various superstitions relating to bad luck. You walk underneath ladders at a few points, there is salt spilled on the ground, you can find an open umbrella in a dark corner of the floor and as you go to leave after grabbing the fuse, the mirrors behind you shatter.
• Abnormal Ammo: After you find some classic ray guns, you find versions of the same gun in later levels that fire things that are a bit less...conventional, ranging from rubber duckies to entire couches.
• Aerith and Bob: You have characters like Ik and Mr. Baleen, and then you have characters like Lawrence and Jack.
• Air-Vent Passageway: In plentiful amount throughout the hotel!
• All Animals Are Dogs: It's not clear exactly what Shrimp is, but he acts almost exactly like a dog. "Almost" being the key word.
• Ambiguous Ending: Some guy on a horse shows up at the end of the game and distintegrates you with his radiating light. You could interpret this as an angel bringing you to heaven, but with how the game ends right after this, we'll never know.
• Ambushing Enemy: Jacks, which disguise themselves as ordinary boxes before trying to leap out and attack the player.
• Amusement Park of Doom: While not exactly a full scale amusement park, one of the levels takes place in an arcade that styles itself like this, having bumper cars, a bouncy house, and several games to play! It's also entirely abandoned, save for you and the monsters within.
• Apocalypse How: As Ik discovers, and the player character already knows, humanity suffered a Class X thanks to a series of incredibly unfortunate cosmic events leading to the planet being split into three pieces.
• Attack Its Weak Point: You have to dispatch the Ribcages by throwing items at their heads several times.
• Bedlam House: There's an asylum on one of the floors, with its most notable inhabitant being Shrimp.
• Big Bad: Mr. Sob, The Man Behind the Man who took ownership of the Upturned Inn from Ik and turned it into the Hell Hotel it currently is by forcefully turning the tenants into monsters for his own pleasure.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: As the game progresses, you start to recieve calls from someone unknown, hinting that Ik isn't all that he seems. As it turns out, the voice was the one you can't trust, as it was Mr. Sob, who only cares about helping you out so he can get to you himself.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: For starters, everyone in the afterlife is apparently made of ash, and that's not even getting into how creatures like the Jacks work.
  • For some reason, the Crows' eggs look more like alien pods instead of actual bird eggs.
• Blackout Basement: Some of the levels turn into this thanks to the storm outside causing power outages. Special mention goes to the floor where you meet the Lil' Chucklers, which are only warded away by the light. Of course, there are several sections cloaked entirely in darkness, and this is the exact level where your flashlight stops working.
• A Boy and His X: A man and his weird, shadowy, vaguely dog-esque...thing.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Ik qualifies, having a variety of nonsensical things to say as you progress through the inn and generally not seeming that grounded.
• Degraded Boss: In one of the early levels, you face what the game dubs a "Water Slug," a massive, slimy creature who can track where you are as soon as you step anywhere in the Grimy Water that floods its floor, not helped by the fact that said water slows you down drastically. Later on, in the aquarium, there's an exhibit dedicated to a water slug, with a key right in the middle of it, forcing you to face the creature again. However, unlike last time, there's a convenient fan right next to the exhibit, making it laughably easy to keep the slug away as long as you keep the fan pointed right at it while you go to get the keys.
• Dem Bones: The aptly named Ribcages, who, as their name would suggest, have fully exposed ribs coming out of their torso. Mr. Sob also qualifies.
• Die, Chair, Die!: The game is built around this, with nearly everything being able to be picked up and thrown at the various monsters who hunt you down.
• Down the Drain: At one point, the floor beneath you collapses and you find yourself stuck in the plumbing system, with only your Mysterious Benefactor as a guide.
• Driving Question: How did you die in the first place?
• Dynamic Entry: The local juggernauts, Fat Pajama Man and Mr. Baleen, both love to do this, with the former breaking through the ceiling and the latter bursting through the wall.
• Fragile Speedster: The two first monsters, and the most common, Lawrences and Crows, qualify for this, only needing two hits and one hit to go down respectively.
• Feathered Fiend: The Crows definitely qualify.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Upon entering the aquarium level and beginning to look through the exhibits, Ik will insist that all the fish are real despite the fact that you can clearly see that they're plastic, calling attention to one Mr. Baleen in particular and mentioning that he likes it when you buy things at the gift shop. As it turns out, Ik mentioning Mr. Baleen being alive wasn't a lie. It was a warning.
  • When you run into your first monster, Ik refers to it as "Lawrence," saying he's a tenant at the inn. This is quickly dismissed as one of Ik's attempts to insist that this is normal when you start running into multiple Lawrences at once, but you learn that he was telling the truth when Mr. Sob reveals that all the monsters were former tenants.
  • Ik mentions a "supplier" very briefly in one of the early levels, which is the first indicator that he's not entirely alone in running the hotel.
  • The Fat Pajama Man always makes a Dynamic Entry by bursting through the ceiling...even after his debut level, when you leave him several floors behind. This makes a lot more sense when you learn that the floors go DOWN instead of up.
  • Although he has no memory of how he died, the player character seems to remember everything else about his life, which indicates the true nature of his death.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Grade: WATCH OUT
• Gainax Ending: Mr. Sob is defeated, but The Upturned is destroyed with him. Ik reveals that the entire human race died due events way outside their control and were actually doing well for themselves, but treats it as more of a "that's life" type thing than anything to be mourned. The game ends with the protagonist being greeted by a glowing white rider, who disintegrates them into light. Putting the pieces together implies that with the death of the human race, the afterlife is also ending. The white rider is none other than The Grim Reaper himself, come to claim the protagonist and take them to the next life.
• Gameplay Grading: Parodied; there are grades, but they're completely unaffected by your performance in each level since each one is just randomly generated. Well, for the most part, anyway.
• Giant Hands of Doom: The art museum introduces enemies who look like this, and they can only be bypassed by throwing something into their open palms... and then getting said something thrown back at the player
• Grimy Water: Several levels feature floors flooded with a strange green water that significantly slows down your movement.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: Your Mysterious Benefactor complains about the randomized nature of the Gameplay Grading.
• Hell Hotel: The titular Upturned Inn.
• Hell Is That Noise: Several monsters qualify, but special note to the giant arms, which are foretold by an ominous gurgling from above which Ik tells the player to ignore.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: An odd variant, where you have to pick a two letter first name and a three letter last name.
• Hostile Weather: The main reason you have to go through all the floors in the first place, as the storm outside keeps knocking out the power.
• Horror Hunger: Why was Shrimp locked away in a Bedlam House? Well, as it turns out, Shrimp is an Extreme Omnivore with a monstrous appetite, and if you can't get him enough food fast enough, you WILL be on the menu.
• Intermission: Happens frequently whenever Ik calls the player for whatever reason, causing everything to suddenly freeze in place. Expect some Mood Whiplash if an enemy is attacking you at the moment.
• Item Get!: Whenever you successfully collect a fuse box.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The entire game is you travelling to your luxury suite at room 1434. Turns out to be Inverted, as the floors of the Upturned Inn go down instead of up.
• The Juggernaut: Two in particular:
  • The Fat Pajama Man, one of the early encounters you have to face, and easily one of the most terrifying despite his appearance. Nothing can slow this man down - barbed wire? Grimy Water? Absolutely nothing to him. The most the player character can hope to do is stun him by throwing objects at him, but it won't last long, and he'll start to block if you try to do it too often. He's also easily the most determined enemy to try to get to you, going so far as to BREAK INTO THE ELEVATOR after you finish a level.
  • Mr. Baleen, who can almost be considered an upgrade to the Fat Pajama Man. Unlike him, Mr. Baleen can't be stunned at all, and can go so far as to break through walls to try and get to you. The most you can hope to do is run. The one saving grace compared to Fat Pajama Man is that Mr. Baleen is slower and can't do as much damage.
• King Mook: The Mother Slug is this to the terrifying Water Slug you encounter early on.
• Macro Zone: One of the late game floors is this.
• Made of Explodium: Red barrels, the ray guns, and the Jacks. Ik even mentions that the latter are partially composed of gunpowder.
• The Man Behind the Man: Mr. Sob is this to Ik.
• Metal Detector Checkpoint: Parodied. Ik had some installed, but there was a miscommunication between the inn and the manufacturer, as the metal detectors only allow metal to pass through. Thankfully, there are some exceptions, such as ash, and as everyone in the afterlife is made of ash, your player character can pass through just fine.
• Monster Whale: A somewhat strange case in the form of Mr. Baleen, a goofy looking Living Statue who nevertheless hunts you down just as relentlessly as the rest of the monsters.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Ik, the Lawrences, the Water Slug, and Shrimp all qualify for this.
• Mundane Afterlife: Turns out the afterlife is just you checking into a hotel. Granted, considering how the hotel is, it's not exactly peaceful either...
• Murder by Cremation: Mr. Sob attempts to do this to the player once he gets to his suite.
• Murderous Mannequin: The Mannequins in the hotel appear far more humanoid than almost anything in the game, and some will start pursuing you when you complete certain objectives. Oh, and did we mention that they're invincible.
• Mysterious Backer: A mysterious voice starts to call you as you progress through the game, giving advice on how to survive the horrors of the Upturned Inn.
• Nightmarish Factory: Three of them, to be exact! First a power plant, then a glass pane factory, and finally a toy factory.
• Off with His Head!: The Fat Pajama Man should've known better than to try and force his way through a closing elevator door.
• Purgatory and Limbo: The game takes place in the afterlife.
• Ray Gun: The arcade introduces some that shoot random interactables when you enter a laser tag room.
• Running Gag: Ik has a habit of calling you at the most inconvenient times possible, like during their encounter with the Mother Slug or when they're being spanked by the Fat Pajama Man for a few examples.
• Run or Die: The game itself says that running sometimes might be a better idea, shortly before you drop down into a massive den of crow eggs. And indeed, several levels tend to end like this after you grab the fuse box.
• Speaking Simlish: All the dialogue is spoken like this.
• Spiders Are Scary: Though you don't see much of them, the Lil' Chucklers certainly look the part.
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: The player character's anti-climactic cause of death.
• Super-Strength: You know you're stronger than the average human if you can pull doors off their hinges and throw them like nothing.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: At one point, you enter a darkened floor, wandering through a maze of rooms with no fuse box in sight...and then Ik calls to inform you that he doesn't detect any electricity on that floor, indicating that there isn't actually a fuse box there. Ik even lampshades it, remarking that you've been remarkably lucky that every floor up to that point had a fuse box somewhere.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: No matter what, Ik continuously insists that the Upturned Inn is normal, despite the continuously growing evidence to the contrary.
• Throwing the Distraction: A vital survival tactic against certain enemies like the Water Slug, which attacks anything that falls into the water covering the entirety of the floor it resides on.
• Throw the Mook at Them: One set of enemies has the distinction of being light enough to pick up and throw like any other object.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: It's not obvious right from the outset, given that this game takes place in the afterlife, but Ik mentions that the current year is 2062.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: During the Water Slug level, Ik will call in and ask if you want to hear his tunes. If you say yes, the resulting tunes are so loud they shake the room and your carefully placed platforms, forcing you into the water and making you easy prey for the water slug.
• Verbal Tic: Your Mysterious Benefactor has a rather notable one he ends all his calls with "alow alow".
• The Walls Are Closing In: The player character gets caught in a massive trash compactor at one point.
• Whodunnit to Me?: The player character can't remember how he died, leading Ik to try and investigate his cause of death.
• Zerg Rush: Though they're not the hardiest enemies by a long shot, Crows make up for it by swarming the player whenever you disturb even one of their eggs.