If we just went an entire year where every game was as short, cheap, and existentially harrowing as Clickolding that’d be great, thanks
It's me, I'm sickos
When Clickolding - a vaguely Inscryption-y sub-hour dread droplet - opens, you’re sitting on a bed across from a man wearing a mask that looks like someone gave up halfway through carving an Easter Island statue of Joe Camel, stuck a pair of googly eyes on it, then went to cry in the corner at what they’d created.
In your hand is a clicker counter. Moose-face stares. What do those eyes convey? Patience? Intent? Longing? If nothing else, they betray a deep certainty that whatever else happens, you’re going to click. If you stop clicking for a moment, a prompt appears in the corner telling you the controls. At least, I think it's a prompt, because it might actually be a threat.
Left click to click. He'd like you to click 10,000 times, please.
10,000 clicks before I get a big wad of cash, I’m told. That’s why I’m here. Immediately, a burning mystery presents itself: Are you really going to make me click 10,000 times, game? Or, more pertinently, am I really going to click thousands of times just to find out?
At irregular intervals, the man will speak to you, and thus I predictably begin to form superstitious rituals around the clicker. What if I click it really fast? What if I get to this number? What if I don’t click it at all? I soon discover I can hold the space bar down to click and feel like a genius. I balance my speaker remote on my space bar and go do some crunches. I’m still watching the screen, of course. I’m not taking my eyes off this camel fucker.
He is deeply unnerving. On his shirt is either blood or the delicious Korean fermented soy and chilli paste known as gochujang. And buddy, I do not think it is the delicious Korean fermented soy and chilli paste known as gochujang. I try watching the static on the tv for a while, but no. I feel his googly eyes burning into my back.
Some nice jazz occasionally swells up in the background, but I can’t really enjoy over the sound of the clicking. It would be presumptuous of me to suggest that my clicking, rhythmic and routine as it is, provides a complementary improvisation to such wonderful brass. Still, I choose to hear a certain freeform chaos between the clacks of plastic on plastic, scores of minor entropic armageddons, in the knowledge that any act of time wasting is also a very minor act of self destruction.
I’m sorry. I’ve just been clicking for so long.
I start timing the clicks. With the spacebar held down, it’s about ten every two generous seconds. That’s three hundred click per minute. That’s…uh. It’s a long time. It’s a long, long time to be clicking a clicker. I’m not going to stop of, course. I’m in too deep at this point.
The real gag at the heart of Clickolding, despite the pun name and the hints you’re indulging in your captor-client's kink, is that you're the mark here. It's a guiltily gratifying act of self-imposed BDSM, one humiliating click after the other. Then again, so is Diablo 4, and at least this has the decency to not threaten you with another season. You can grab Clickolding on Steam for £2.24/€2.69/$2.69. I’d give it a resounding thumbs up, but my hands need a rest.
Clickolding is by Strange Scaffold, whose Creative Director Xalavier Nelson Jr. has written many words for RPS.