Bah fun(?)-bug
A Christmas Carol is a timeless classic that remains a staple of the holiday season, with producers in film and television taking advantage of its public domain status every couple of years to pop out another version of the story that’ll never be as good as Scrooged or The Muppet Christmas Carol. I’ve seen plenty of productions of it during my near-40 years on this Earth, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the story tackled in a video game.
Perhaps that’s why Ebenezer and the Invisible World was the most amusingly confounded trailer at the PC Gaming Show. From Orbit Studio and Play on Worlds, Invisible World tells the story of what happens after the ghosts helped Scrooge become a new man. I’m not sure if Dickens ever planned for a sequel, but I have to imagine if he did write one, it wouldn’t have had the geezer down-kicking bad guys or using the power of the ghost of Haley Hall to pass through ethereal gates.
I’m not going to say I’m sold on the idea of reinventing one of literature’s most famous tales as a metroidvania, but it’s certainly a lot more interesting than just turning into a horror game. Plus, the holiday setting is charming, and the hand-drawn environments are scrumptious.
Ebenezer and the Invisible World is in development for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch. Hopefully, it can make it to storefronts before Christmas. A 15 GB demo of the game is now live on Steam.
