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Clover: A Curious Tale review

Game: Clover: A Curious Tale
Platform: PC
Genre: Adventure (Platformer)
Developer: Binary Tweed

Staff review by Gary Hartley

August 09, 2010

Clover isn’t your typical video game. It was atypical last year when it was released on Microsoft’s Indie scene and drew favourable reviews, and it’s just as much so now that the extended PC version is available for all. Perhaps you can blame XBLI’s limited file space for not displaying many of the upgrades present in A Curious Tale, including solid voice acting, animated portraits, extending the number of puzzles and the addition of multiple endings, but the heart remains the same. Clover, then, is what Braid might be if the budget were scaled right back.

Tom is alerted by a knocking at his door and a demand to open up. He could rush right for the key and follow orders, or he could take a moment to read the birthday card his mother sent him on his 16th birthday. It’s a bitter-sweet memory as, moments later, we learn he’s been recently orphaned after the ship his mother had boarded mysteriously sank. The guard doles out an orphan’s allowance then urges the young boy to earn his keep by discovering remnants of the ill fated ship’s wreckage. He could do this, but several things stand in his way, none more so than an agitated farmer armed with a pitchfork and a zero tolerance attitude to people trespassing in his cornfield which, inconveniently, is the only way to get to the beach.

Trespassing leads to imprisonment, as do many other things in the world of Clover. Paranoia runs high amidst the whispers of war that reach into the sleepy village Tom lives in. If he sets so much as one foot onto the farmer’s private lands, he goes to jail. If he uses water from the town well to quench the fire burning down his neighbour’s home, he goes to jail. If he falls in a body of water and pollutes the king’s drinking source, he goes to jail. He’s let out almost immediately without cost, but it’s more an attempt at cause than effect; his world had suddenly become a zero tolerance military state.

This harkens back to Clover‘s inspiration being a Hermann Goering quote the designer found scrawled on a wall in London, and, as such, the more Tom delves into the death of his mother, the more he discovers an underlying conspiracy borne of rulers with hidden agendas, blinded by what perhaps started as good intentions towards their subjects. It’s a creeping layer of darkness that belies the hand-drawn graphics, the wispy watercolour scenery and ambient piano music backgrounds. It slides in, slowly overwriting the playful attitudes of the townsfolk, like the cowardly stuntman wannabe you need to fool into performing his first daredevil trick or the overly-critical book reviewer tired of violent, gangster novels, and interested in something more friendly.

You curry his favour by presenting him with a book heavily referencing Codemaster’s most famous egg-shaped adventurer, Dizzy, which is fitting considering the similarities between the two overlapping titles. To progress, Tom needs to solve puzzles in much the same way as numerous adventure titles; through items that can be collected and employed in abstract ways. Some of these are simple: to bypass the militant farmer, simply get him plastered on the cider an unruly teenager hid from his overly protective father. A limited inventory means you have to think ahead to which items you feel would be best employed. Capturing a spider isn’t going to help you retrieve a valuable item from beneath the castle’s drawbridge, but it might give your daredevil friend the fright he needs to complete his initial stunt and reward you with a new tool.

The political message manages to shine through the clumsiness of the odd platforming section and gives the gamer more than the simple sense of satisfaction needed to see through each puzzle. Clover wraps itself up in uniqueness: its hand-drawn presentation initially promises a light and cheery game, then it forces you to peek into the shadows and, by the time you reach the ultimately sobering conclusion, you’ve found the murky darkness has suck up around you. You’re drowning in it. And there’s no longer anything you can do but despair.

More Reviews by Gary Hartley
	Labyrinth X (Xbox 360) Trial and error so tedious, it even takes the gleam off barely-covered anime tits.
	Spec Ops: The Line (PlayStation 3) Come suffer alongside me. You'll thank me for it.
	Super Black Bass 3D (3DS) Too clusmy to be a sim. Too slow to be arcade. Too ugly to get a second look.

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