Bliss. This is Ben & Dan’s magnum opus and one of the most essential games of 2020. But Clockwork God has its own story to tell. What's this? Support RPS and get an ad-free site, extra articles, and free stuff. Never miss a thing. and Time Gentleman, Please! Lair of the Clockwork God review - platform meets adventure with hilarious consequences Point and tick. The game's setting involves re-teaching an underground supercomputer about emotions, like joy and fear and anger and so on, and doing so requires Ben and Dan to venture into worlds - constructs - created by the computer to trigger these emotions. At times, I felt as if I was playing a fictional game Nate might come up with on a slow Monday. Price: £14/€15/$18. WHY PLAY ONLY ONE GENRE OF GAME when you could be playing two slightly different ones at the exact same time? based on Ben is sardonic and doesn't like the new ways of doing things, a lot like a stereotypical PC gamer, sorry PC gamers, whereas Ben is all exclamation mark positivity and millennial pumpedness for anything new. Lair of the Clockwork God review This genre-hopping adventure could be 2020’s funniest game. It's inspired. It’s collaborative, and it’s kind, and the experience is far richer for it. Sometimes our protagonists are split up by circumstance, and have to work their way back to each other; often they’re operating on the same planes, Dan transporting Ben by piggyback to areas where he can work his adventuring magic. Ben behaves like a character in an adventure game: he walks around interacting with objects and people, picking things up and combining them to make new items to solve puzzles. Best Minecraft shaders for 1.16.3 Whenever Clockwork God threatens poignancy, Ward and Marshall can’t help but lob in something puerile, like a grenade full of piss. Nor can protagonists Ben and Dan, fictionalised versions of real-life developers Ben Ward and Dan Marshall. Heh, I'm still smiling thinking about Lair of the Clockwork God. I created this account specifically to comment on this game, out of frustration. Cutbacks, compromises and optimisations - but they work. It's all good. Honest, brash writing, great art direction, cohesive design and a level of self-awareness I haven't seen before from a dev-studio. Celeste’s abstraction, Super Meat Boy’s frustration, VVVVVV’s loose hold on gravity, Braid’s purple prose – all feature in Dan’s genre crash course, and none escape Ben’s withering quips. The humour can be pretty outrageous, actually, but it's all delivered in such a charmingly wide-eyed cartoon way it's hard to resist. I created this account specifically to comment on this game, out of frustration. Comments are now closed. Best Warzone loadout for Season 6, Release: Out now