I’ve got a soft spot for point-and-click adventures that fight with you every step of the way. The good ones don’t need to stump you for hours to feel clever. They just need to keep throwing nonsense at you until you start adapting to it.
Earth Must Die sits comfortably in that lane. It plays like a short, bizarre sci-fi fable that keeps escalating its own nonsense, then dares you to treat it as a series of perfectly reasonable problems. If that sounds like a normal sentence, the game will undo that sense of stability within minutes.
You play as VValak Lizardtongue, Grand Shepherd of the Tyrythian Empire. A self-important space tyrant with the posture of a man who has never once been told no. His loyal companion is Milky, a nursing bot designed to feed babies, whom VValak has not yet weaned off. There are plenty of games where you’re the hero. Here, you are simply awful, and the story has the good manners to let you be.
The pitch is simple enough. Terranoids have invaded, the Tyrythian kingdom is in a state, and VValak intends to sort it out in the only way he knows how. What follows is less an epic adventure and more a casual, bizarre short story. The kind that feels close to Discworld II: Missing Presumed…!? where the story is technically happening, but the real joy is in how the characters go about it. It is not trying to meet Monkey Island in scale, or King’s Quest in consequences. It knows its place, and is better for it.
Structurally, it’s classic adventure game stuff. You move through a series of locations, speak to the people, and the things, you meet, and connect ideas until the next ridiculous solution reveals itself. The interface is deliberately simple too. No sprawling verb list. No menu labyrinth. You can look, talk, or use something on something else, and that’s it.
On controller, you move with the left stick and aim your cursor with the right. Keyboard players get WASD paired with mouse pointing. It’s an approach that keeps you in the flow of the jokes and the pacing of the scenes, which matters, because comedy dies the second you start struggling with the UI. Earth Must Die rarely lets that happen.
The puzzles are consistently silly in the right way. They are not moon logic for the sake of it, but they do operate on a cartoon logic where the world bends just enough to make the gag land. You will be asked to do things that sound ridiculous on paper, then feel annoyingly reasonable once you’ve stared at the scene for long enough.
One moment, you’re using political tactics to convince a spaceship crew to fly into the sun.
Next, you’re taking out a gunship using an automated vacuum cleaner and a toilet. It’s constantly asking you to treat absurdity as a practical tool. When your brain clicks into its rhythm and you start thinking the way the game thinks, it’s surprisingly satisfying.
It helps that Earth Must Die is rarely precious about solutions. It wants you to try things, prod the scene, and fail in small, amusing ways without punishing you for it. The setbacks feel like part of the joke rather than a slap on the wrist.
Milky is also how the game stops you from getting properly stuck. Their Milkipedia gives you extra context and, more importantly, extra dialogue options when you’ve hit a wall. It’s a hint system with a personality. Which is a tactful way of saying it sometimes feels like being told off by a nursing robot.
Even so, there are a few lulls where the next step is not immediately apparent, and the game briefly turns into that familiar adventure shuffle. Talk to everyone again. Click on everything again. Hope you missed the one line that changes the entire situation.
The writing is unapologetically British, and it feels specific rather than generic. It isn’t just sarcastic characters and tea jokes. It’s the rhythm of the lines, the petty insults, the laid-back cruelty delivered with a pleasant tone. References are dotted around like landmines for anyone with the right cultural baggage. I laughed far more than I should have at a Weak Lemon Drink reference.
The humour lands because it commits. It will build an entire scenario around a stupid idea, let it run long enough to become funny, then twist it just as you start to assume you’ve seen the whole joke. VValak is ridiculous, but he doesn’t know he’s silly. That’s where the comedy breathes.
VValak and Milky work because the game lets them be more than just running gags. VValak is all bluster until he isn’t, and Milky can be oddly caring one moment and casually savage the next. It keeps the whole thing from turning into one long sketch.
The voice cast does a lot of heavy lifting, and thankfully it’s mostly spot on. Joel Fry’s VValak grated on me at first, but once I got used to the pomp, it clicked, and I started enjoying how insufferable he is. Martha Howe-Douglas is brilliant as Milky, bouncing between sweetly oblivious and casually brutal without ever feeling forced. The supporting cast is strong too, and I still can’t quite believe I got to hear Jon Blyth turn up as the leader of the Council of Orgies.
The art style avoids overcomplication. Everything is readable, expressive, and clearly designed for you to poke at until something breaks in a funny way. The sound design follows suit, punctuating the nonsense without ever getting in the way.
I was happily along for the ride until the finale, which feels like it’s been edited for time. It lands with a thud, wraps things up quickly, and leaves you with that irritating “wait, is that it?” feeling. Not a deal breaker, but it’s why the score tops out here.
Still, the rest of the experience more than makes up for it. The puzzles are inventive, the writing is consistently funny, and the performances elevate everything, even when the pacing briefly wobbles. Earth Must Die is not a giant adventure you’ll be talking about for decades, and it is not trying to be. But it made me keep clicking without resentment, and that is the honest compliment.
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from No More Robots
