This review marks the first of two reviews of Strange Scaffold games. Clickolding’s oddness intrigued Kimari. Next week, Ronald will look into the company’s I Am Your Beast, which releases today.

By Kimari Rennis

Clickolding is by far the strangest and most uncomfortable game I have ever played. Strange Scaffold, the developers of Clickholding hold true to their studio’s description “Developing games that you wouldn’t expect to exist, with intentional, weird, and nuanced constraints.” That’s because, in the 30 minutes it took me to complete it, I have never wanted to step away from my computer so bad. But I was strangely glued to my seat playing.

Any keen eye would notice that the game’s name is a play on words between “click” and “cuckolding.” While I won’t define the latter word in this review, clicking is the main action you perform.

You’re seated on the edge of a bed in a dark and dingy hotel room with a click counter in your hand. The dated wallpaper encasing the room is a muddy mixture of brown and a dark green that mutes the little white flowers cascading down the center of each sheet. The rain pouring down in the dead of night gently taps the window. Across from you seated in a red chair, is a masked man telling you to “click it.”

The man claims that underneath the hotel bed is a suitcase with $14,000 dollars that will be rightfully hours after you reach 10,000 clicks on the counter. I think anyone who isn’t a child would understand the strangeness of this encounter and the tension in the air of the hotel room.

From the game’s name, its premise, the setting, and the masked man’s prompts to click faster or slower in different areas of the cramped hotel room, Clickolding is inherently sexual. But it’s also bizarre and ridiculous at the same time.

Besides the unsettling atmosphere, the first thing I noticed was the set of glowing white, googly eyes on the masked man. The second thing I noticed was the cartoonish shape of his oval head with its exaggerated roundness and curves. But the goofiness of his body and the way he squirms in his chair fades away when he starts angrily barking orders at you when your clicking isn’t to his satisfaction.

As an avid rhythm game player, I’m no stranger to tapping keys at a fast speed. But even I started to slow down after the first 7,000 clicks. Feeling the exhaustion in my hands while this strange man stared me down gave me a sense of uneasiness that I’ve never felt before.

The final stretch of the last 3,000 clicks was a drag. And the further along you progress with your clicks, the more the masked man reveals about himself. About how he has a family, about how he used to click himself, about how our clicks remind him of the man he used to be, about how hard it has been to live with himself. The most jarring reveal of all that made me do a double-take was the pistol he pulled from he pulled out from behind the chair.

Clickolding is the kind of game that will send shivers down your spine – it doesn’t need jump scares, loud noises, monsters, or chase sequences. Clickolding is a 30-minute experience that will leave your skin crawling with only a masked man, a hotel room, and a click counter.

Circle member and former intern Kimari Rennis, who has been with the NYVGCC for many years, is working at Lucas Games as a paid intern.

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