HomeFeaturesBetrayal At Club Low
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
Betrayal At Club Low - Official TrailerWatch on YouTube
Betrayal At Club Low - Official Trailer
For starters, it feels like a very apt description of how most of us are probably living our lives right now - our hapless pizzaiolo included. Without wanting to catapult this conversation into a spiral of existential dread, nothing in the world is going particularly well right now, but in our everyday lives, we can at least rest assured that most things are fine, probably, and not on fire. We are (hopefully) succeeding, if somewhat barely, and I like that Betrayal At Club Low represents this feeling of always being a hair’s breadth away from failure at any given moment, allowing you to rejoice in your minor victories, but without, you know, letting you get too big for your own boots at the same time. It also serves to make the actual trouncings you deal out feel properly special, too. There’s no higher force judging you on those. You just won ‘em fair and square, and rightly earned yourself a truly unqualified ‘Success!’.
The best victory scrapes, however, are definitely the ones where you’ve got multiple dice in play, rattling around the screen in a flurry of pluses and minuses. You see, upgrading and throwing your intended Skill Dice is one thing, but Betrayal At Club Low’s real stroke of genius is its Condition Dice, which are additional modifiers you accrue after almost every single action.
Can you barely succeed at stealing someone’s coat? This guy can! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun
I think part of the reason why Club Low’s highs feel so fist-pump worthy when you draw is because the odds are so clearly stacked against you in this mad, bonkers building, and you’ll need to make some serious dough (sorry) in pizza tip money to earn enough cash to fully upgrade your dice for a sure outcome. But certainty is not what Club Low is about, really. This is a game that thrives on the unexpected, of being able to punch through laser doors, have cosmic encounters with glowing green mirrors, and have throngs of dancers bop their heads to records made out of bread discs. It is a game where pizza ingredients on your specially formulated Pizza Dice (yes, you also have Pizza Dice in this game) can save your ass, allowing you to re-roll opponent scores if your skills and conditions get the best of you, or even swap your numbers wholesale for a surprise switcheroo stomping. Those toppings are very rare, but when they come around they’re as delicious as a freshly served burrata.
