If you have not already played Betrayal At Club Low and need a premise to better understand: as a pizza delivery man (or are you just roleplaying one?) you are sent to infiltrate a club and rescue a compromised underground agent. Hijinks ensue.
This game is a comedy in that the text descriptions for decisions/actions you can take, conversations you have with other people are absurdist comedy writing. They are only ever really amusing though and never become laugh out loud or memorable for myself. The best recurring bit was how characters will exit the game by a stiff animation of them just rising up and out of frame. It recalls the “Poochie died on the way back to his home planet” animation from The Simpsons. Visuals are equally absurdist. Buildings have all the wrong angles, the urban skyline bobs in place, individuals resemble animatronics standing in place repeating the same simple movements until you somehow trigger a change in the game state.
Unlike a game such as Avowed, which strives for the photorealism our industry is so dependent on for validation, Club Low uses this to comedic effect. And it is not as if the physical space of Club Low is somehow less real or believable than any given city in Avowed. The game is consistent within itself that a crowd of people at a DJ club making minimal movements is accepted as part of this reality than two individuals who share a brief conversation and then are locked in place for all eternity in a more expensive and “real” game.
The other side is the dice, which captivated me. Dice rolls dictate every action, roll well and you progress, fail and you take on debuffs or in the rare instance of a single-chance roll completely miss an opportunity. Pretty much every roll will earn you money (if only this were true for all gig workers) which is used to purchase numerical increases to the face of the various skill dice: cooking, deception, music, observation, physique, wisdom, and wit. Your opponent, whatever form they may take, also rolls dice which you need to overcome. You are able to re-roll a dice twice, with some modifiers being added on as you accrue pizza toppings. Because you are also a pizza delivery person who gains access to additional die (recipes) when you come across a pizza oven. You get to pick the toppings, each with different effects, leading to strategizing which toppings to prioritize: recovery for health and nerve, special effects (with a much more limited available quantity than the others), monetary gain and multipliers?
Failing a dice roll, much like Disco Elysium4, is frequently not the end of a run, unless you’re playing on the higher difficulty. On normal I succeeded and failed in unequal measure (leaning success), and had no real desire to save scum my way to success save for a near-finale file simply to see what other endings I could see. Due to being able to re-roll a die makes the rolling much more engaging and less about luck-of-the-throw. These die duels are not compartmentalized but many connect and can add additional buffs/debuffs to other dice rolls depending on your success/failure. These are where the comedy and dice mechanics combine the most explicitly, in having your absurdist actions have absurdist consequences that directly effect your possible dice roll outcomes. Elation at pulling off a re-roll that ends with my numerical die being swapped for the overwhelming larger opponents were the highest points of play. Overcoming debuffs and creating superior momentum with a string of successful buffs feeds dopamine into my system like coal into a train engine. Too bad when I come up against a skill check I have not invested in it derails the entire line.
Keeping the overall playtime low makes the toybox of opportunities enticing to return to. The classic, “start a new save file and make different decisions,” which I argue has more value to a player in theory than in practice. The knowledge that a theoretical alternative playthrough exists sitting in our mind makes us appreciate the game more than if it were entirely linear, even if a majority of us never actually make that alternative reality real, myself included.
