Day 83 - Clickolding
Fifty, Horror, Nightmare Fuel ·
Sam’s Take:
I want to start this review by apologizing to Lomka.
Lomka, your cute little guy with no arms and head-button smashing animation awarded you the lofty title of “the best count-the-clicks game we’ve played”. I thought you’d get to hold that title at least a little longer, but unfortunately someone made a real game that’s also a count-the-clicks game. I’m very sorry you only got to hold your title for three days Lomka. Let us all take a moment to gaze upon its short-lived glory one last time:
Clickolding is a game about clicking a counter for an old masked man who REALLY enjoys watching you click. Early on you learn about some sort of deal where if you make the clicker go around to 10,000 (resetting the clicker back to zero), he will pay you for your work.
From there the game just consists of clicking the timer. Occasionally the man in the mask will ask you to move to a different part of the room and click there, sometimes he’ll ask you to turn down the air-conditioner, sometimes he just wants to shoot the shit about life.
There are some obvious parallels to sex work brought up in the game. The masked man asked for pictures before hiring you, the remote grimy hotel, even some of the dialogue has some of the same cadence as someone who just hired a sex worker for the first time:
That being said, it’s not a direct allegory at all. I’d be disingenuous to say that the clicking represents some sort of sex act, or even really even that it gives the masked man any sort of literal sexual pleasure. Despite its parallels, Clickolding really is a game about clicking for an old man who really enjoys it. Some of his dialogue is overly emotional and uncomfortable, but there is no point where the game goes “gotcha, this was a sex thing the whole time”.
I bring this up because it made my experience with Clickolding deeply uncanny. Every time my brain jumped to “is this a sex thing?”, I felt like a weird judgemental bastard. Why am I assuming that? This man just wants me to click. Why are we acting so weird, why do we have to go to some remote hotel in the middle of nowhere to click this button?
Then he brings out the gun.
He shows it off then puts it away, and suddenly we are trapped alone with a strange man with a gun, and he DOES NOT want us to stop clicking. While this again is not exactly the same, it’s hard not to think of the dangers of having to sneak under the radar for sex work. How our country’s unnecessary demonization of the profession can lead to scenarios where you are trapped alone with a stranger, and don’t realize they are dangerous until it is too late. Hell at this point even Uber drivers were going through my mind, any profession where your whole job is being alone with someone you don’t know… and the longer you’re trapped with them, the more tense it gets.
My point isn’t that this game has a lot to say about sex work or Uber drivers, but that it creates a scenario so strange, yet emotionally understandable, that you plunge right into the uncanny valley. We’ve played many horror games in both this review series and our previous one, but it’s rare to find one that doesn’t need to rely on any short-term tricks to make you uncomfortable. I’m not fully anti-jumpscare, or body-horror, I think they both have a place as tools of horror-creation, but Clickolding is so simple in its design. Besides the creepy mask, the only other horror element Clickolding relies on is creating a situation both familiar and impossible. It made my brain rush to the nearest parallel I could find, but wouldn’t let me latch onto it, kept me scrambling to make sense of the man, the room and the clicker. It got all the fear that could be found with my worst parallel thought, but wasn’t literal enough for me to poke holes in it, or even begin to understand it.
I won’t spoil the ending of this game, Skeeter I discussed it and we’d like people to experience for themselves, plus I think there’s enough to go on without getting into the ending. If you do decide to play it, there’s a sensitivity warning on the Steam page that is not a joke, fair warning. If you can stomach it though, Clickolding is a direct and simple reminder that the uncanny can be more than just a visual style, it can also be used as a narrative device.
Recommend: Yes
Replay Percentage Chance: 50% (may do a spoiler ridden review later)
Time Played: 35 Minutes
Skeeter’s Take:
The aptly named “Clickolding” is an obvious play on the word “Cuckolding”. If you somehow weren’t on any social media during the year of the 2016 United States Presidential Election and don’t know what a “cuck” is or “cuckolding” is, allow me to help:
I awoke in a dimly lit hotel room, a digital clicker in my hand. I was sitting on a dirty bed. Across from me sat a strange man wearing a glowing-eyed Elephant Seal mask.
He explained that the clicker rolls over at 10,000 and if I can get it to roll over, he’s got $14,000 for me. Seems simple enough. I bind the left click macro I set up for the previous clicker games we’ve played and get to work.
CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK
The strange man then starts asking me to vary the clicking a bit. He makes different demands of me. He asks me to stand in the corner and stare at the tiger painting while I click. I oblige. He asks me to adjust the thermostat, and I crank that bitch up for him. He asks me to turn on the TV, and we start at static while the clicker raises ever higher. Whatever he wants, I do. I am his little dirty toy to be used. But $14,000 is $14,000. That could buy a really nice suit!
The higher the number climbs, the more the man seems to get worked up in a… let’s say “sexual” manner.
Right before I hit one-thousand, this floppy nose demander asks me to edge him at 999 while he nearly creampies his zipper:
The more he got into the ever raising number, the more gross I felt. Is this really worth the money? Whoring myself out like some left-clicking ape? I try to push the thought from my mind. I must make my money.
Eventually the man starts to get personal. He starts telling me about his kids, and wondering what his wife would think if they caught him here, watching me click.
This is when things started to get really uncomfortable for me. We were strangers up until this point. We didn’t know each other, and the man even wore a mask that concealed his identity. Now he’s telling me about his kids? This was getting too personal. I didn’t like it. I felt like I knew too much about this strange man, sitting there with stains on his shirt. We were becoming closer. I didn’t want to be closer. I just wanted my money.
Sam and I agreed not to spoil the end of this game. I personally think it’s worth going in and seeing for yourself. The entire game is a bit of an uncomfortable journey, and the ending is a nice button on that
Clickolding holds true to its name - it’s a clicker game. I think it does a few things exceptionally well for a clicker game that elevates it above most.
First off, it’s not Giraffe.
Second, it utilizes narrative. I don’t mean that it just “has a story” which, yeah, that does put it far above other clicker games, but it does a good job pacing the story by triggering certain scripted events when reaching clicking milestones. This not only allows the dev to place very intentional story beats where they are appropriate, but it also gives the player a sense of progression.
Third, It sets a click goal. Having something to work towards is so much better than the enigmatic goal of “see how big your number get”. The game does allow the player to play the game in that capacity once they have completed the main story, so it’s nice it still has that option and sticks to its roots.
Fourth, It’s got a character - two if you are included! The strange masked man is damn intriguing. He tells you just enough about himself and his odd fascination with clicking to get a sense of who he is, but never to feel comfortable around him. His goals are murky and you aren’t sure exactly what he wants. The fact that he keeps making demands helps keep the gameplay fresh, as well. He has you click in the bathroom, hit the alarm of the bedside clock, etc. I think this is great design. The gameplay stays interesting, but it’s also motivated and fits in with the “pay for fetish” undertones this game is running with.
The tone of Clickholding is “gross”. The game made me feel more uncomfortable than most horror games I’ve played in recent years. There’s a point where the masked man flashes a gun at you - I want to say it’s around the half-way point. These small escalations and power plays kept me on my toes the whole time. I wasn’t sure what his next demand would be, but I sure knew I didn’t want to say “no”. Being in a room alone with a man who is actively commenting on how you and him are alone while flashing a gun is such a gross feeling. Clickholding doesn’t try to draw too much attention to this - I guess I would say it doesn’t try too hard to make you feel uncomfortable. It’s definitely in its goals to make the player feel uncomfortable, but it doesn’t highlight those moments for the player and trusts they will land. The strange man delivers everything so casually, like it’s just another day for him, and that really helps sell this feeling. I feel like Clickholding has something to say. My first playthrough felt so esoteric, and I was letting a lot of it roll over me to see what stuck so I can’t really tell what Clickholding is trying to say. It has themes it’s playing with and I feel that the ending recontextualizes the rest of the game, so I would be interested in a replay to see if I could put some pieces of exactly the story it’s trying to tell, and what its goal is in telling it.
For now though, I’m just feeling like this:
Recommend: Yes. Extremely unique experience. Very uncomfortable. Much WoW! I do recommend setting up a click macro to make things easier on you. You can hold space and it will auto-click in game, but it’s not as fast as a mouse macro I think. Don’t worry I’ll post my speedrun on speedrun.com later.
Replay Percentage Chance: 80%
Time Played: 31 Minutes
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