I recently took on a garden allotment tenancy for what I now consider the tellingly low rent of £60 a year. Arming myself with some shiny new shears, I visited my little slice of heaven and found it to be a resentful thicket of Guinness cans, sacks of worrying discarded clothing, nettles sturdier than barbed wire, and insects of a kind I have never seen before and never care to again.
At one point I got my foot stuck in a long-abandoned bucket and, while running around in a panic, put my other foot through a red ant nest. It was a lot like playing the demo for Cleanfall, except that I can’t build an airship out of flying jellyfish and flamethrowers and blast this stupid allotment into submission. Mind you, Cleanfall is evidence that an airship made of flying jellyfish and flame throwers will only get you so far.
I wrote up the release of the demo last year, summarising the game SEOishly as “Spelunky and Terraria with a touch of Carrion and Noita”. I have now played another, updated demo, following the announcement that Cleanfall will enter early access on 8th August, and my summary has narrowed to “side-scrolling Scavenger’s Reign”.
In Cleanfall, you are a robot who is trying to tunnel to the core of a planet full of wriggly things. Some of the wriggly things are docile, at least before they’re provoked. In the opening jungle layer, for example, there are frogs that belch and bobble about in search of edible greenery. How cute! You can even stand on them without pissing them off. But then comes night, and with night comes a sea of glowing red eyes, pouring into the layout from all sides.
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The thing about the red-eyed nightfiends is that at least you know they’re hostile. A lot of the organisms in Cleanfall are hard to categorise without risking a confrontation. I’ve spent a lot of the demo listening to unseen critter calls with a furrowed brow, trying to work out whether “squibleeyahckckckc” means “stay the hell away from my nest” or “where my edible greenery at”. The consumable items can be similarly mysterious. What does a “nanite egg” do? Oh, it instantly decomposes the entire cave I’m standing in. I should have kept that one in reserve, probably.
The one surety is that you need covering fire, because threats come from all directions. Usefully, the chasms teem with vending machines where you can trade lumps of ore and dead insect for turrets, which secure themselves springily to the terrain when placed. Each night, you hole up somewhere behind a bunch of these automated guns, hoping like hell you’ve placed enough.
Even better, you seek refuge in the skies. See that veiny purple dirigible that idly spits out twirling explosive seedlings? Attach a platform here and some Gatlings there and a rocket thruster here and presto, you have yourself a flying fortress.
The first time I built a flying fortress in Cleanfall, I fell clean out of it. The fortress carried on blasting at creatures on the upper levels, deluging me in crafting materials as I sought a way back up. It made for an efficient farming operation, I guess, but that was before sundown. As the shadows drew close, I consulted my inventory. Hmm, I don’t think this “fart bulb” is going to help me much, or at least, not for long enough. I sure could go for a nanite egg right now.
Things I haven’t mentioned: the newly updated demo has overhauled UI elements and jetpacks for certain character classes. You get three lives, with the ability to ghost around a bit before you respawn: once you’ve used them all up, you’re transported back to the surface by a phantom train. The surface is home to a tall man with a very long nose and a top hat, who professes to be your friend. I’m sure he’s nothing to worry about.
Cleanfall is scruffy and unwilling and volatile, all the key components of a good video game in the year of our Lord 2025. I get the sense that, unlike my mutinous and possibly haunted allotment, this one will be a keeper. Let me know if you have any thoughts on the demo and also, if you have any advice about humane ant relocation strategies.
