HomeReviewsBetrayal At Club Low
Betrayal At Club Low review: a delicious snack-sized espionage RPG set in a nightclubPull shapes, roll dice, and toss pizzas
Pull shapes, roll dice, and toss pizzas
Our undercover man has been compromised and you’ve mere hours to extract him from a nightclub using every tool in your agent’s toolbox: deception, wisecracks, dancing, drinking puddle water, and baking pizza. That’sBetrayal At Club Low, the latest game from Cosmo D, set in the same strange city asOff-Peak,The Norwood Suite, andTales From Off-Peak City. This time, it’s an honest-to-goodness RPG, full of skill checks, strange solutions, multiple endings, and so very many dice. And it’s great. And it has a demo.
Betrayal At Club Low - Official TrailerWatch on YouTube
Betrayal At Club Low - Official Trailer
Betrayal At Club Low has a simple setup: going undercover as a pizzaiolo, get into Club Low, find the compromised agent, and get him out. You can see your man almost from the start, sitting cosy with the big boss and his beefy guards, but it’ll take effort to gain access to him—and a fair bit more to achieve a clean getaway. All in all, my first effort took just over two hours. I wish more RPGs were this length. I poked around, undercovered some mysteries, did some weird stuff, made a lot of friends, made my escape attempt, and came away delighted.
With the problem clear from the start, Betrayal At Club Low is about preparing yourself for the getaway attempt. You can take an early crack at it if you’re feeling daring, but it’ll all go easier if you make allies and scope out your options. This might see you impressing the dancefloor with hot moves, ousting a chef to take over her flamingo stew, hotwiring a car, merging your consciousness with the security system, punching a laser grid into submission, gaining and betraying trust, and drinking from a puddle.
This all sounds weird out of context but, like all Cosmo D’s games, feels perfectly natural in this absurd world. I adore how people display their obsessions so plainly, like the security guard who sits watching the tennis on his monitors, next to a giant crate of tennis balls. I like the unreal and often grotesque look to characters, whose stock animations and synchronised poses are a great kick of theatre and melodrama. It commits so fully that nothing is weird or out of place, it just feels like itself. And once again, Cosmo D’s excellent music courses through it all (also availableon Bandcamp).
So far, so Cosmo D. What’s so good this time is that he’s built an interesting system of rules and opportunities atop that mood.
Skill checks are often against great things, like the dancefloor’s tolerance for physical comedy
Durian pulled big plays for me, once trading a tough challenge’s 10 for my lowly 3
On top of that, as you succeed or screw up rolls, you’ll gain temporary Condition dice. Rolled alongside your skill and pizza dice, these are manifestations of buffs or debuffs (or both) which might linger for a few rolls. Positive conditions like Clever or Inspired might add bonus numbers to your roll, or restore your Energy or Nerve, while negative conditions like Embarrassed and Feeling Guilty can do the opposite. Some Condition dice have both positive and negative faces. I enjoyed carefully picking my next step to work with my Conditions, learning to burn off negative dice in easy challenges then earning positive ones before tackling tasks that would otherwise be beyond me.
You can even find a few rare permanent upgrades, conditions or equipment which add whole extra dice with powerful buffs. These don’t come easy.
Both charming and baffling, that’s me
This is a lot of explanation to say: I enjoy this game as a dice-focused RPG which treats dice as both number generators and as physical objects I create. I like that, aside from big one-off decisions, you get to re-attempt challenges you’ve failed—and that you have to think real hard about this if you have negative Condition dice stacking up from repeated failures. I like that you can preview every challenge’s dice before committing, letting you prepare your own in response, as well as see the Conditions you’d suffer for failing. You have full awareness of what you’re facing, every time. I like when a rolling dice gets stuck and you have to ‘kick’ the table to jostle it free. I like that many tasks involve a series of checks, maybe having you dance, sneak, and fool around in succession—and often letting you interrupt that chain then return to it later.
The bouncer’s ‘fists of lead’ dice will give me a whack even if I do win—and don’t come at me with your “oh but don’t you mean die, not dice” or you’ll feel mine
Most of all, it’s so satisfying to see your hard work of charming everyone at Club Low pay off when a tough challenge rolls a 11 (your own skill dice are capped at 6) then the many extra dice edge you ahead.
I’m trying to see all eleven endings too. With seven down, I’m running out of ideas for the other four. Hmm. What can I get right/screw up next.
I already knew that Cosmo D could make games which tell fascinating and fun stories in a world I want to explore. I’m thrilled to now learn that Cosmo D can also make a game which makes me consider moves carefully as I enjoy mastering a system. I have no idea where he might go after this, and will be delighted to see.
