The Clot Thickens is what looks a lot like a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs trying to cash in on abandoned app store stuff. The mobile app is a really simple Adobe Flash tier action/timing game where you autorun around circles and jump between them. This was done a long time ago with some GameMaker Studio asset flips from HotFoodGames/ImperiumGame... I'd link to the asset flips but they got banned (Lovely Kitchen for example, you can see it on SteamDB but not here anymore). Anyway the gameplay is exactly the same as this mobile app, and while this isn't an asset flip, well... one of the reasons we don't like asset flips (ethics aside) is because they're pointless, shallow, and uninteresting games. Just like this. Same goes for mobile apps, really.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The mobile app features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
The very poor quality of this mobile app puts it squarely on-par with ancient 1990's Flash/Java games, and given it's 2024 (and this was released not so far back in 2021), gamers and the industry expect and deserve better than this kind of low effort shovelware.
This looks and feels like a mobile app, and I could see evidence it was on mobile phone app stores, but it seems to have been (understandably) removed from the app stores.
Regardless, for all intents and purposes The Clot Thickens is effectively a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this mobile app is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 5 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.
So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
The Clot Thickens has the farcical price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. Because this is the kind of game you can just play for free on mobile phones, it's impossible to recommend anyone should pay money for the same experience on Steam.
