Review of Lair of the Clockwork God by Harald B
Still funny, but I'm not sure this was a good idea
It’s hard to give Lair of the Clockwork God a whole-hearted recommendation. To start with the worst part, this is not the game to pick up if you’re in it for the platforming. The level design on the platform sections is decent enough but the building blocks are too large, the controls aren’t nearly tight enough and it really doesn’t do anything original with it.
Better then to see the platforming sections as support for what’s mainly an adventure game. Luckily I only had difficulties in a few places, and I consider myself pretty bad at platform games.
As an adventure game, Lair of the Clockwork God has good traditional puzzles and the great sense of humor we know from the previous Ben & Dan games, with all the bizarre and gross stuff that comes with that. (Also, a significant amount of jabs at the state of indie games, especially platformers. A bit distracting from the main story sometimes, but certainly some good jokes and callbacks there as well.)
However, to work easily as a platformer the controls were done in a way that makes adventurey interactions take more steps than they’d otherwise need to: the mix does not feel as natural as in games like Jenny LeClue or Forgotten Anne.
If you’re a fan of the Ben & Dan series you’ll probably still want to pick this up, especially if it goes on discount. But they probably could’ve done better with a more straightforward adventure game, and if you’re not in it for the humor it won’t be the game for you.
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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Easy
