Lair of the Clockwork God (Also Dan Marshall games, also Adventure games)

[brat-sampson]

I love Dan Marshall. He was the lead designer of Ben There, Dan That andTime Gentlemen, Please, which are still two of the funniest adventure games I've ever played. Very British, very unique, good puzzles etc. Loved 'em.

Then he took a long break from Adventure Games and worked on a lesser-known indie called The Swindle. Fun game, you sneak into houses, use gadgets and try to make out with as much cash as possible while being stealthy around the robot guards. It was also good and pretty well-received.

Now he's gone back to Dan and Ben, but Dan's moved on from Adventuring and wants to be an indie darling puzzle platformer instead. Ben refuses and sticks resolutely to his Adventuring roots. Somehow, these styles have been combined in Lair of the Clockwork God, which released yesterday on Steam. To understand kinds what this means, there's a short gameplay demo video here, but basically it's a mixture of platforming sections, adventuring sections and areas that are a mixture of both. Dan jumps around, collects shiny things, gains new abilities, dodges lasers etc, Ben ambles slowly, talks to NPCs, collects and combines (sorry, CRAFTS) inventory items and refuses to jump at all.

I've done the first few sections, played about 3 hours and it's bizarre, but it works. I jive with the humour, like the puzzles enough and while the platforming is never going to compete with an actual platformer, the physics aren't as good etc, it's good *enough* considering it's not the main selling point. Basically I just wanted to highlight something that I reckon some people here might like but may have otherwise missed.

Not convinced, here's PCGAMER themselves! giving it a pretty healthy score.

[brat-sampson]

Finished it in about 7 hours, but didn't find everything apparently. Loved it. It made me laugh a lot, puzzles and platforming were both suitably challenging at times and fuck me is it smart. Like, proper 'don't read up, go in blind' smart. Also delightfully stupid and crass at times too.

Just brilliant.