Lair of the Clockwork God

The mix of platforming and adventure game mechanics is a neat concept, but it never fully comes together. Some jokes land, but the gameplay can feel uneven and doesn't leave much of an impression. It's an okay experience, just not one that really stands out.

The concept of combining a platformer with a point-and-click adventure definitely sounded good on paper, but Psychonauts basically already did that and did it better without even making it a gimmick. In practice, splitting the platforming and point-and-click halves into two separate characters just serves to make gameplay slower and more awkward, especially given how sluggish Ben is in comparison to Dan. It often feels like he's this albatross around your neck that you're forced to carry because he's the only one who can do the point-and-click stuff you need to advance the game. (And the implication that Ben is actively choosing to make things this difficult doesn't exactly help.) ...Maybe I'd be more willing to forgive that if the writing were better, but I just don't find the series' sense of humor all that funny. In fact, the main duo (especially Ben) come across as so unlikeable that it sapped my will to keep playing (especially given what I know about the ending from TV Tropes). Weirdly, I think this might be the first time I've ever really had that problem, let alone when the characters in question were me. Also, heads up: Devil's Kiss counts toward your playtime if you…

Not sure I've been as glad that a game was finally over with as with this one. It seems so promising, an explicit point-and-click/platforming mashup, but even with relatively good and fairly often funny writing the annoying, clunky platforming drags it all negative. "I really wanted to like this" as they say in these reviews. Did not manage to.

I would really like to love this game. I am fond of both platformers and classic point and click adventures, but I found myself more frustrated with how the design elements of those games were implemented here more than charmed by the cross-pollination of genres. The platforming controls are abysmal and frustrating more often than not. The adventure game puzzles are well implemented, but the contextual interface is unintuitive and adds frustrations on top. If the controls were just somewhat more streamlined, such as allowing me to use mouse 1 to click through dialog instead of having it default to "." or having to be keybound to another key that isn't used for anything else, or if some of the interactables like portals defaulted to "use" on a basic key click instead of having to open the context menu and use the mouse to ensure I don't select 'look at' for the umpteenth time, I would have enjoyed the overall experience much more. There is a lot to enjoy here, but it is mired down in frustrating game-feel and a death by a thousand cuts of minor grievances.

I had a love hate relationship with this game but I did manage to complete it and had a few laughs along the way so I recommend it. I found some of the puzzles and platforming difficult so I had to sometimes refer to the very good text guide, no shame in that, some of the puzzles were a bit obtuse. In one of the more difficult platforming sections the little character, Dan, was swearing and cursing at the difficulty, very funny since I was doing exactly the same thing. A few tries and I did get through it and I don't consider myself to be a very good platformer. The game is quite meta and once you understand that you start to understand that some odd things that might look a bit like glitches to you earlier in the game are actually game play elements and used to solve puzzles later, very clever. Who would have thought turning down the in game volume level would help the characters in a noisy environment. The game was very chatty and texty so although essential to the story and the game it did slow down the gameplay a bit. In summary an interesting mixup of old school point and click adventure, platforming and edgy meta / break the fourth wall type dialogue. Obviously made w…

What do I get for buying a game based on the creators' pedigree and my love of their previous games? A buggy disappointment, apparently. Ignoring the acknowledged-yet-unaddressed issue where you can fall through the ground, I ran into one where the context menu failed to respond, and another where the dialogue window failed mid-conversation and necessitated a restart. Honestly, the bugs were more entertaining than the gameplay. The premise is entertaining, but the clunky context menu was very uncomfortable to use on the Steam Deck, leading to sub-par adventuring. They sought to take the piss out of platforming, but this resulted in it being piss poor. At least the opening logos are funny, and there are plenty of accessibility options.