I can appreciate a game that decides to go for style over substance in certain cases. I remember enjoying Graffiti Kingdom quite a bit, and the big draw of that was making your own character to play through the game. This was back on the PS2 for those that don’t find that mechanic all that appealing, as plenty of games do that now. So when you create a physics based game in a world made of clay, you have my attention.

Claybook is essentially a sandbox game with goals that are either setup in the premade levels, or of your own design in the editor. If you’re expecting a vast experience along the lines of voxel based games, like Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders, you’ll probably be a bit disappointed by this. While you won’t be slaying dragons or entering the Nether, you will be playing with the likes of liquids and manipulating time to climb on previous versions of yourself.

Perhaps the coolest thing about this game is that when it says the world is made of clay and everything can be interacted with (read: deformed/destroyed), that’s very much true. Running into objects will leave appropriate gouges, and you’ll have the color and seemingly the mass of whatever object you collided with. Simply moving along the ground leaves an impression in it, which really adds to the immersion of this being a world made of clay.

So that’s all well and good, but how does it play, and is it fun? Controls work well enough – rolling as the different objects reminded me a bit of Katamari Damacy, although quite a bit less precise. You’ll only be using one stick to move all of the directions you’ll be going, and the game is not overly forgiving with collision detection. The first thing you do in the game’s tutorial is move through a tube, and getting into that tube took far longer than necessary as it kept registering me as hitting the sides. The next section is supposed to teach you how to get over obstacles by making a clone of yourself and going back in time. With the less than ideal controls, this can be hit or miss, and I ended up just going over the wall next to the chasm instead.

The game looks great, but there is one part that you’ve no doubt noticed in all these images. The child in the background makes this unintentionally horrifying. Technically, you are the child, who uses a joystick to move the clay around. However, being that you are actually the clay and he’s controlling said clay, he’s always staring right at you, regardless of where you are located. It’s like those paintings that stare at your from any direction you look. It’s not a huge deal, but the game would honestly be better without the child. Presumably there will be more to him once the game fully launches – hopefully a range of emotions to go along with the serial killer neutral expression.

This seems like the kind of game I could put on with my daughter when she’s a couple years old and just have a fun time rolling about in the colors without any of the mess around the house. And with the goals that the game offers, that wouldn’t be too far from what she’d be doing anyway. Eating chocolate is one of the first levels’ tasks, which entails running over various chocolate pieces and bunnies until you have “eaten” enough to beat the level. My daughter would likely accomplish that without having any idea what she was doing. I also had some interesting encounters with the menu system. When attempting to switch the inversion of the y-axis, the options were for buttons not even on the page. I had to go out of the menu multiple times for it to actually let me choose to invert, and then the next level it reverted, but the check was still there. So after unchecking the option, it was how I wanted to play. UI isn’t something people think of too much in a game, but when it’s bad, it stands out far more than poor graphics or screen tearing.

I really want to like Claybook, as the art direction is beautiful and the idea is charming. However, there’s a lot that needs to be done for this to be where it wants to be, opposed to being a neat tech demo. Controls are what they are, but it’d be nice to see the physics be a bit more forgiving. A UI that doesn’t bug out and responds properly would be a great step as well, since that turned me off almost immediately. The editor also seemed a bit obtuse, although I probably didn’t spend enough time with it. There’s a lot of potential here, and I’m interested to see where it goes, but I’d avoid picking it up right now unless you have little ones that you think would enjoy it.

 

Claybook is being developed and published by Second Order. It was released on Steam Early Access and Xbox One Game Preview on October 18th, 2017 and February 16th, 2018, for $19.99 and $14.99, respectively. The game was provided to us for preview on X1. For more on Claybook, visit its official site.