Ben & Dan resume adventuring in Lair Of The Clockwork God
The laffs return
They said it couldn't be done, they said it mightn't be done, and I still mutter that it probably won't be done, but it seems Ben & Dan will finally reunite later this year. The stars of Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! (and alter-egos of Ben Ward and Dan Marshall) will return in a new adventure, Lair Of The Clockwork God. Ben's character wants it to be an adventure game while Dan's character is adamant that indie platformers are where the money is these days so... they're both stubbornly going to act as if they're playing the game they want. I did some laughs at the announcement trailer.
That's good, that. So we'll switch between the two, with Ben insisting upon gathering and combining items and Dan being the boisterous jumping lad that he pretends to be. Dan's not, you know. Lives in the countryside now, like some sort of retired banker. Except he's making games like The Swindle and Behold The Kickmen under the name Size Five Games instead of pootling around in a Range Rover, calling into Jeremy Vine, and waiting for death. As far as I know.
"We all have fond memories of point-and-click games, but honestly who has the time for all that endless meandering anymore?" Dan Marshall said in today's announcement.
"Lair Of The Clockwork God has been designed to retain the best of the genre: meaty puzzles, huge inventories, funny jokes, and plenty of verbs! But is structured more like a platform game, so it's forward-focused, driven, fast paced, with accessible, localised puzzles, all broken up with platforming challenges."
Oh so like how Double Fine's The Cave did that years ago, gotcha Dan.
Lair Of The Clockwork God is due... at some point? The game's Steam Page says August 31st, and the press release says summer 2019, the trailer says simply 2019, so it could be any or all of the above.
Disclosure: I know Ben and Dan a bit, back from when I too was a rowdy ne'er-do-well causing trouble at games events. I once went to shoot pool with Ben and was not nearly as cool a trick-shotting hustler as I assumed I would be from having watched a lot of Big Break in my youth. It fills me with terror to realise I may be more Jim Davidson than John Virgo.