In the streets of a not so distant future, between the general public onanism sales space, and the bouncer employed satirically by a nightclub’s post-millennial homeowners, stands an infinite telephone show encased in concrete. Squint into the photo voltaic flare brightness of its 20-foot display, and you’ll nearly make out among the messages as they scroll by. Local youths are voting on whether or not Ben and Dan, Lair Of The Clockwork God‘s twin protagonists, needs to be let into the membership: #YE or #NA? “@dan total dinosore – upgrad yur vesties,” advises one. “Nice historhythm gramps,” chides one other. “Paleofoot much?” The polls are in, they usually’re predicting an emphatic #NA.
Lair Of The Clockwork God is a game about getting older: the bewilderment and comedy of being left behind, of changing into much less sure and extra inflexible. It’s the ageing anthem of designer-writers Ben Ward and Dan Marshall, maybe the primary individuals to star in their very own game since Vin Diesel.
More exactly, Clockwork God stars polarised caricatures of its lead builders, every with their very own method of wrestling mortality. Ben nonetheless lives by the self-set guidelines of ‘90s point-and-click adventures – perambulating ranges with one eyebrow raised, and refusing to climb over even the smallest of ledges. Dan, in the meantime, breathlessly chases relevance, ditching the conventions of a dying style to mantle via the world within the type of standard platformers as a substitute. The pair seem like they belong to completely different games: Ben drawn gangly and aloof like Guybrush Threepwood, Dan shrunk right into a squat dice of pixel artwork.
There have been a number of notable makes an attempt to mix platformer with point-and-click over time – Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer have each had a go – however Clockwork God’s nice energy is that it doesn’t attempt to reconcile the 2. Ben and Dan is likely to be navigating the identical maps, however they’re taking part in completely different games; change to Ben with the faucet of a button, and the background objects you sprinted previous as Dan grow to be interactive factors of curiosity, the topic of daft dialogue and experimental prods from instruments in your stock.
At one juncture, Ben calls forward for Dan to learn out a paragraph of exposition. “No, Hermione Granger,” Dan responds. Size Five Games throw out good, breezily humorous strains like this on a regular basis, as in the event that they’re nothing.
Sometimes our protagonists are cut up up by circumstance, and need to work their method again to one another; usually they’re working on the identical planes, Dan transporting Ben by piggyback to areas the place he can work his adventuring magic. Fittingly, the puzzles are conventional within the excessive – multi-step Rube Goldberg machines that it’s essential to run a number of instances to troubleshoot. The options observe a LucasArts type of logic – one which rewards considering so lateral it’s virtually upside-down. But there’s nothing right here that’ll tax style veterans, and should you haven’t pointed or clicked shortly, you gained’t discover the story held hostage by obscure conundrums.
When you do get caught, there’s normally the choice to modify to Dan and deal with certainly one of his parallel parkour challenges for a bit as a substitute. It helps that Size Five have prior expertise in each genres. Clockwork God isn’t solely a quasi-sequel to the studio’s early journey games – the cult hits Ben There, Dan That! And Time Gentlemen, Please! – but additionally follows The Swindle, an completed stealth platformer. While the digital camera is ropier than Mario’s, and sound results don’t all the time slap the way in which they might in Rayman, Dan ably hops amongst his platforming friends.
Size Five primarily take goal at – and inspiration from – the acclaimed indie platformers of the previous decade or so. Celeste’s abstraction, Super Meat Boy’s frustration, VVVVVV’s free maintain on gravity, Braid’s purple prose – all function in Dan’s style crash course, and none escape Ben’s withering quips. To make actually nice parody, particularly the interactive form, you must love the stuff you’re ripping to shreds, and Size Five clearly adore each a part of its platforming collage.
Normally, when a game knocks incessantly towards the fourth wall, it’s trigger for concern – an indication that even the builders don’t actually consider on the planet they’ve constructed. But Clockwork God has its personal story to inform. Earth’s firewall towards world-ending catastrophe is on the blink, and to get it again on-line, Dan and Ben should train the {hardware} to care about humanity once more. That means working themselves via a collection of simulations designed to elicit core feelings: pleasure, worry, anger, and so forth.
As they achieve this, the sentient pc on the story’s centre grows in complexity. Its new feelings issue into dialog, and the machine ages earlier than their eyes. It begins to harbour insecurities, nurse resentments, and develop a promising sideline in passive aggression. Like Dan and Ben, it struggles to embrace the greyer facets of the human expertise.
Humour is subjective, however Clockwork God’s grasp on comedy appears fairly inarguable. It is a stress check for the rib cage. It equals Schafer when it comes to sass and sharp statement, and grounds its huge concepts in a British sensibility that frequently defaults to knob jokes and GCSE references. There are a few jokes in there with set-ups so slow-burn and refined that, when the punchlines dropped, I couldn’t giggle for gasping. At instances, I felt as if I used to be taking part in a fictional game Nate may provide you with on a gradual Monday. Clockwork God has a contact of the Garfield Kart Furious Racings about it.
Your mileage might fluctuate – or, to place it extra concisely, your age might fluctuate. It is likely to be that I join with Clockwork God so strongly as a result of, every week away from turning 30, I’m getting into the liminal house it issues: doing the work to maintain myself socially educated, nonetheless taking part in youth tradition, but accepting that it’ll by no means once more be made for me. I can select to be Ben, stubbornly flying the flag for the previous methods. Or Dan, desperately tripping after a spot in society I can by no means once more occupy.
Whenever Clockwork God threatens poignancy, Ward and Marshall can’t assist however lob in one thing puerile, like a grenade stuffed with piss. But their actual friendship, and years of collaboration, can’t assist however lead to real weight. Somewhere within the combine, these two finest mates have discovered the self-awareness that results in acceptance. Clockwork God celebrates the stress between previous and new, and finds profound comedy within the juxtaposition. It’s Size Five’s masterpiece. Nice historhythm, gramps.
