Clive ‘N’ Wrench

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This review was requested by the amazing Johannes in lieu of a contest prize. Long story. In any case, you have him to thank for the review!)

Clive ‘N’ Wrench is a 3D Platformer released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, where players take the role of a plucky rabbit and his monkey sidekick as they seek to stop a mad scientist from… doing something bad… something to do with time travel. Yeah, the plot isn’t exactly clear, but it’s a 3D Platformer, you’re the hero, and you’re going on a time-traveling adventure. That’s the important part, right?

Clive ‘N’ Wrench is not just a 3D Platformer, this is a 3D Platformer that loves 3D Platformers. This game is absolutely filled with loving homages to games throughout the genre’s history, and even the main components of the game itself seem like a Frankensteined-together hodgepodge of bits and pieces from some of the best games in the genre. The gameplay seems very similar to collect-a-thons like Banjo-Kazooie and in fact Wrench the monkey resides in Clive’s backpack much like Kazooie does in those games. Clive’s move set, on the other hand, seems pulled from Jak & Daxter, complete with a spin move where the protagonist uses his buddy as a weapon to bash enemies with. And the hub world split into different time periods absolutely seems reminiscent of Crash Bandicoot 3.

This respect for the genre isn’t skin-deep, either. You can tell a lot of love and care was put into small details, like the animations in the game’s opening, or the way you collect captured or lost animal helpers like you collect Jinjos in Banjo-Kazooie. Make absolutely no mistake – a lot of time and effort was spent on this game, and you can really tell that the game’s creator truly cared about making something that could live up to those great Platformers that inspired it.

It doesn’t, though.

Love and care are absolutely vital parts of making a great game… but so are skill and polish, and Clive & Wrench is severely lacking both – I know this game was long in development (somewhere I read it was being developed for 10 years!), but despite this, I feel like it still needed more time, and more testing. Everything here seems janky and poorly put-together, with wonky collision detection, poor hit detection, and inconsistent physics. Sometimes I would jump inexplicably five times higher than normal for seemingly no reason, sometimes I would get stuck on scenery, and sometimes I would be well into my attack animation to take out an incoming enemy, but they would still hit me anyway.

It’s not just the execution that’s poor, either. There are some baffling design decisions made throughout the game. From the start, it’s not entirely clear what your goal is, why you’re collecting things (besides “fix time stuff”), or where you need to go. The game has a tutorial area for your moves and frequently has a helper character adding bits of vague direction or plot exposition, but these are often unclear or are accompanied by a camera view of a spot that doesn’t seem to have any connection to what’s being talked about.

Beyond that though, there are some frustrating design choices here. Health is frustratingly rare, yet dying often seems to have little consequence outside of boss battles, besides shunting you to the last checkpoint spot you hit, usually not too far off. Exiting a level and re-entering it requires you to hit all of the level’s switches again to activate them, and if you made the mistake of leaving a level after rescuing the “Jinjo” animals but before collecting your prize, you’ll have to collect them all over again. And of course, of course the camera is a frustrating mess, slow to move, getting stuck in places, and yet still needing you to babysit it all the time.

Probably the worst problem I encountered was when meeting the first boss, which takes place on a cylindrical track much like an early boss in Klonoa: Door to Phantomile… but doesn’t restrict you to that cylindrical track, meaning that as you dodge left and right, with the camera in a fixed ring following you, you can still send yourself careening off the platform. Add to this enemy projectiles that are small and hard to see, the aforementioned issues with enemies that hit you even if you’re in the middle of attacking them, and a challenge level that’s far too high for a first boss, and I kept dying over and over and over again to all of this absurdity.

The presentation, as I mentioned, features some wonderful animation that really helps to portray the personalities of the characters, and there’s a lot of detail in the environments, but there’s also so much going wrong with them. I don’t know what this game’s framerate and resolution are on Nintendo Switch, but looking at this game made my eyes hurt with the odd way it looks and moves (yeah, don’t trust the above screenshot from Nintendo.com, I’m pretty sure that came from a different version of the game).

It doesn’t hurt that the game often uses garish lighting, like the neon green-flooded second level, as well as locales where there’s so much going on in view that it just seems like a jumble. And on top of this, the 3D character models often have parts that pop into and out of existence, and then you’ll frequently see entire sections of levels pop into and out of existence. Add to this a combination of soundtrack and sounds that I can only describe as a cacophony, and after a few hours of playing this game, I literally started to feel sick.

I’m saddened to say this, especially about a game that is so clearly a labor of love, but Clive ‘N’ Wrench is an utter mess. There are parts of this game that seem absolutely wonderful, a beautiful tribute to the classics of a great and storied game genre, and I didn’t even get into all the fun TV references, movie references, and cultural references hidden throughout. But all of this game’s wonderful elements just don’t make up for the horrible lack of polish and numerous questionable design choices. The result is a game that may on occasion delight, but will always inevitably follow this up with frustration and disappointment.

tl;dr – Clive ‘N’ Wrench is a 3D Platformer starring a rabbit and his sidekick monkey on an adventure through time. This is a loving tribute to 3D Platformers of old, absolutely filled with references and homages to the greats of the genre. It is also, unfortunately, extremely unpolished and suffering from some incredibly poor design choices, resulting in a game that is frequently too frustrating to enjoy all the love and care that clearly went into it. This game had so much potential to be better than this, but that potential has been wasted.

Grade: C-

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