Lair of the Clockwork God

Lair of the Clockwork God is one of those games that earns its gimmick. Size Five Games built it as a genuine hybrid: half classic point-and-click adventure, half 2D platformer, and the twist is that each half is embodied by a different character. Ben is your old-school adventure protagonist, too proud to jump or run, who interacts with objects and solves inventory puzzles. Dan is a self-aware indie platformer hero, desperate to be taken seriously by the games press, who can leap, sprint, and dodge. You switch between them constantly, using each one's limitations as the puzzle. It sounds like a gag, and it is, but it also actually works as design. The writing is where this game lives or dies, and it lives pretty comfortably. The banter between Ben and Dan is sharp, self-deprecating, and genuinely funny without leaning entirely on meta-humor. Yes, there are jokes about walking simulators, about Braid, about what counts as an "indie darling." But Size Five wraps those jokes around a plot that has real stakes and characters who, against all odds, feel a little human by the end. The apocalypse framing, multiple simultaneous world-ending events, gives the game room to move through distinct environments and tonal shifts without it feeling like padding. The platforming itself is light and forgiving. Dan controls cleanly, the levels are readable, and the challenge sits in the low-to-moderate range. This is not a precision platformer. If you want tight movement and punishing obstacles, look elsewhere. What the platforming does well is stay functional enough that it never breaks the comedic rhythm. The adventure side is similarly approachable: puzzles are logical, item combinations make sense, and the game resists the worst moon-logic traditions of the genre. Veteran adventure players might find it a touch easy. That is probably the right call for a game asking you to laugh while you play. Pacing is brisk and the runtime sits around five to six hours, which feels intentional and correct. There is no bloat here. Each section introduces a new wrinkle to the Ben-and-Dan mechanic, and the game closes before any single idea overstays its welcome. The soundtrack underscores that sense of handcraft: it is genuinely good, tonally matched to each environment, occasionally a little melancholy in the quieter moments between jokes. For a game this overtly comedic, the sound design takes itself just seriously enough to land the emotional beats it is quietly aiming for. If I have a reservation, it is that the game front-loads a lot of its setup before the mechanics fully click. The first thirty minutes can feel a bit expository, leaning on the comedy while the dual-character system is still finding its footing. Stick with it. By the midpoint, the puzzle design and the writing are working together in ways that feel earned. This is a game made by people who clearly love both genres they are spoofing, and that affection shows in every slightly-too-specific joke about inventory management.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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