Lair of the Clockwork God

Lair of the Clockwork God is funny and one of a kind, but it’s also far from perfect. It’s let down somewhat by its random bugs and lack of polish, but if you can look past them, there’s fun to be had here. Dan and Ben continue to be wonderful protagonists – but the mixture of platforming and point-and-click adventuring isn’t going to be for everyone. Like Marmite, you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it.

Whenever Clockwork God threatens poignancy, Ward and Marshall can't help but lob in something puerile, like a grenade full of piss. But their real friendship, and years of collaboration, can't help but result in genuine weight. Somewhere in the mix, these two best mates have found the self-awareness that leads to acceptance. Clockwork God celebrates the tension between old and new, and finds profound comedy in the juxtaposition. It's Size Five's masterpiece. Nice historhythm, gramps.

Lair Of The Clockwork God is an excellent game that will take you on a hilarious journey solving puzzles with Dan and Ben, even if the journey is shorter than I would like and the jokes don't really read to anyone who isn't quite steeped within games culture.

We need more games like this, please. Funny, irreverent, varied, and utterly superb, Lair of the Clockwork God is definitely worth snapping up.

This genre-hopping adventure could be 2020’s funniest game.

Lair of the Clockwork God is a genre mash-up that probably shouldn't work, and yet it does. It feels a little unrefined, intentionally so, but there's plenty of comedic fodder in indie platformers, modern gaming and life for Ben and Dan to riff off through the lens of classic LucasArts style adventures.

Lair of the Clockwork God is a difficult one to score. What it does well is brilliant – the humour is great, with constant jokes both quickfire and slow-burn – but the gameplay is a more complex matter. While it's not bad by any reasonable metric, it is awkward in places. But, then, this is intentional and comes part and parcel with the story, so do we treat it more leniently? Is there some hubris in presenting a flawed game, but distracting from said flaws by making them... kind of the point? It's a question that not even Nintendo Life can truly answer, but we can put a big number under a rev...

Ben and Dan’s games have been talking about the impending doom of the planet for a little while, but the recurring theme really hit home this year. For indie developers, it’s always a struggle to release games on the horizon of a new console generation, but with the addition of recessions, marches and masks, AAA publishers have been pushing harder than ever to soak up every last bit of news coverage, and self-published games, especially single-player experiences, are having a hard time getting noticed.