• Game: Size Five Games's Devil's Kiss
• Release Month: February.
• Quick Look: N/A.
• Started: 03/12.
• Completed: 03/12.

Devil's Kiss is a visual novel that is about twenty minutes long and has one achievement called "Basically Read a Book". It is not so much a commercial product (though you can buy it separately) but an elaborate Ren'Py joke included with the purchase of the actual next game on my list, Ben Ward and Dan Marshall's Lair of the Clockwork God. If those names sound vaguely familiar, it's because they made a couple of point-and-click adventure games more than a decade ago starring self-effacing facsimiles of themselves: Ben There, Dan That! and Time Gentlemen, Please! (Dan has since gone on to make a few other games, notably The Swindle from 2015, and I'm sure Ben's been busy also.) These two games appealed to me at the time not only because they were deeply referential, of '90s adventure games and trashy British pop culture alike, but because the two leads had a sharp comedic voice in a medium that is typically, and tragically, lacking for same. Their long awaited third game in their little trilogy finally landed at the start of the year, ironically settling on "the end of the world" as humorous subject matter shortly before Covid made it all too real.

However, I'll get to the Clockwork God and where he might be residing in a future update. Devil's Kiss is more or less a bonus prequel that posits how Dan and Ben originally met: in a school run by demons for the sake of the elemental manifestation of suffering that resides in Hell, which turns out to be the case for every other school also. Dan and Ben are joined on their first adventure by Laura, who likes shooting at wildlife and looking behind waterfalls for artifacts, and Jayce (or "JC" or "Jay-cee" or however you wish to pronounce his name) who is much more partial to going through vents in bathrooms and reorganizing his inventory every five minutes. There's a few minor branches here and there - despite any attempts to follow the "paths" of the other characters, Ben is Dan's true and canonical partner-in-crime - but it's largely an excuse to make a few referential jokes and kick people in the balls. Or bollocks, as we like to say around these parts. These bollock parts.

I was a little wary about reviewing this along with everything else this month, mostly because people are going to be yelling at me for spamming the game-specific forums with all this insightful video game critique, but partly because there's not a whole lot of substance here and there was never meant to be. I think a pervading theme of Lair of the Clockwork God and its particular split-focus on adventure gaming and "Indie platformer" is how much Indie games have changed since the original Ben & Dan adventures - though, honestly, that sphere has long evolved past puzzle-platformers as well and is squarely in the realm of roguelites and VNs these days. Devil's Kiss may have been a way to address the recent surge of the latter, though it's not so much a love letter to this booming Japanese export than a begrudging (or entirely mocking) acknowledgement of its popularity. Either way, it was 20 minutes of clicking through dumb joke dialogue, and that's a good enough time for me.

GOTY Verdict: I don't think it'll make my top-ten list, but the genuine commercial product it was attached to certainly might.

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