Developer: Size Five Games
Publisher: Size Five Games
Release: Out now
On: Windows
From: Steam
Price: 14/ 15/$18
In the streets of a not so distant future, between the public onanism booth, and the bouncer employed ironically by a nightclub’s post-millennial owners, stands an enormous phone display encased in concrete. Squint into the solar flare brightness of its 20-foot screen, and you can just about make out some of the messages as they scroll by. Local youths are voting on whether Ben and Dan, Lair Of The Clockwork God‘s dual protagonists, should be let into the club: #YE or #NA? “@dan total dinosore – upgrad yur vesties,” advises one. “Nice historhythm gramps,” chides another. “Paleofoot much?” The polls are in, and they’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 becoming less certain and more rigid. It’s the ageing anthem of designer-writers Ben Ward and Dan Marshall, perhaps the first people to star in their own game since Vin Diesel.