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Game News Clam Man 2: Headliner is an upcoming combatless stand-up comedy RPG inspired by Disco Elysium

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Tags: Clam Man 2: Headliner; Team Clam

Disco Elysium was a huge success, so it's expected that we would see some clones. In Clam Man 2: Headliner, you play as a stand-up comedian clam man in a city inhabited by anthropormophic sea creatures. Like Disco Elysium it has no combat system, with stats related to the protagonist's stand-up comedy skills, and the dialogue interface is basically identical. The game is being developed by a gentleman from Montreal who calls himself Marafrass and it's actually a sequel to a point & click adventure released last year. We discovered it when he launched its Steam page two days ago. Here's the trailer and description:



CLAM MAN 2: HEADLINER is an upcoming stand-up comedy RPG; a combatless, narrative adventure that takes you on an unlikely quest in a very unlikely world. Play as the titular Clam Man and uncover a secret lurking in the basement of Snacky Bay Prime Mayonnaise that will change the course of your life! Do quests, get jokes, and do stand-up!

THE GAME JUDGES WHO YOU ARE
Four different stats dictate your abilities;
  • Aquadynamics - your ability to perform physical comedy, mime, act out scenarios or just remain deadpan!
  • Improv - the ability to think on the spot, be strange and absurd, or come up with new takes or ideas!
  • Detection - your ability to perceive the world and use logic to deduce it! The key ingredient in observation comedy!
  • Self-Awareness - how much of an absolute mess you are! Taking a page from games like Fallout: New Vegas and 'dumb' playthroughs, high Self-Awareness could turn you into an empathic, nervous wreck, while Low Self-Awareness will let you be mean to children, slap people, and blurt out the most unbelievable b******t you could think of. Yay for self-deprecating comedy!
TONS OF DIALOGUE
If you're averse to lots of reading, this might get tricky - Clam Man 2 has a LOT of branching dialogue, offering tons of replayability! Dialogues also feature tons of static skill checks that only unlock with the right stats; if a conversation only has a couple of available response options, chances are that other outcomes and absurdities hide behind a different character build!

GATHER MATERIALS

In order to do stand-up, you need jokes! In Clam Man 2, quests are character-based with choices to be made and errands to be run, and finishing a quest rewards you with material you can use in your shows! Every quest has multiple endings, and depending on your choices, the resulting joke loot will change, and it's impossible to see even half of all the jokes in a single playthrough!

GET ON STAGE

Each joke you receive from quests will measure your abilities, with classic RPG dice rolls. High stats and the right joke makes all the difference! Succeeding will give you multiple options of where you want to take the joke, and even failing will allow you to choose your destiny in a spiraling maelstrom of stuttering, awkwardness, and pure bad taste. Will you land every joke, or will you bomb your way through your shows?

NO FIGHTING

Clam Man 2 is a narrative RPG, with zero combat! (Apart from a part where you can slap a guy in the face.) Furthermore, bombing jokes doesn't lead to a game over - instead, it leads to changes in how characters perceive you, with larger ramifications on the story in the full game! Oh, and you'll also be embarrassing yourself on stage.

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS
Clam Man 2 is being developed by a solo developer who previously wrote and designed Clam Man, a point'n'click adventure game! You can follow the development on twitter!

There's no release date for Clam Man 2 yet, but a free prologue demo build called Clam Man 2: Open Mic is available on itch.io (the trailer is actually for that). The prologue will also be released on Steam on June 19th.
 

Daemongar

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Yeah, let's buy a "comedy" RPG from some slob that can't be bothered to put together an even mildly humorous trailer.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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So, uh, I'm guessing its not actually comedic, just themed around stand-up comedy? Not that 90% of humor games don't fall as flat as a board.
I mean, "What's the deal with video game trailers"! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
 

MRY

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I remember how Vault Dweller once remarked that [INT] and [CHA] gate dialogues, written by people with neither high intelligence nor high charisma, were utterly cringeworthy. I feel like taking on the task of having comedy-related stat checks is, accordingly very risky business.
 

HoboForEternity

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My dad did the clammest thing today

He came downstairs when were all playing Video Games and he said to me and referring to my friends when he said it, "Hey who invited the clam brigade over, didn't know your mum was making seafood for dinner." My friends were in shock and I was in disgust. Im so embarrassed right now I think im going to be sick, what should I do?

my friends are in the other room not talking and my dad is just laughing watching tv in his bedroom, if my mum mum finds out about this I don't think pat and matt will be able to sleep over for the night and its ****ing stupid cause the weekend is my time. My time to relax and have a good time, I don't need this bull****
 

Haba

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I remember how Vault Dweller once remarked that [INT] and [CHA] gate dialogues, written by people with neither high intelligence nor high charisma, were utterly cringeworthy. I feel like taking on the task of having comedy-related stat checks is, accordingly very risky business.

And not very entertaining for the player.

I guess in theory this could work.

You need to get material for a jokes from something you've experienced, so you go around doing your normal day stuff, whatever that may be. Play as traditional RPG, player skills determine where you can go and what you can do.

Then you perform the stand-up part.

The stand up segment itself shouldn't be fully scripted, it would need to have some degree of interactivity to it. Lets say the game gives you a topic for your performance, like lets say "cats". Then you as a player have to decide where you will go with the joke. Character skills determine the choices available, game generates the joke on the fly.

Apply basic machine learning[1] to produce the jokes, it isn't super complicated in the end. Joke styles in a few different CATegories to fit character archetypes etc. Pick a word, system gives you new choices based on the earlier selection, repeat a few times to deliver the joke.

To make it less boring, you could apply some audience interactions and reading the mood etc. So if your character is savvy, you can steer the joke into a different direction once you figure out how your audience is reacting. Succeed in challenges and get rewards (free drinks, quick blowjob in the bathroom)... Or you fail miserably and get your ass kicked.

Easy scenarios start with tame material, later you have to do more difficult things like racist jokes to a black audience.


[1]
https://web.stanford.edu/class/archive/cs/cs224n/cs224n.1174/reports/2760332.pdf
https://amoudgl.github.io/blog/funnybot/
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2010
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Tags: Clam Man 2: Headliner; Team Clam

Disco Elysium was a huge success, so it's expected that we would see some clones. In Clam Man 2: Headliner, you play as a stand-up comedian clam man in a city inhabited by anthropormophic sea creatures. Like Disco Elysium it has no combat system, with stats related to the protagonist's stand-up comedy skills, and the dialogue interface is basically identical. The game is being developed by a gentleman from Montreal who calls himself Marafrass and it's actually a sequel to a point & click adventure released last year. We discovered it when he launched its Steam page two days ago. Here's the trailer and description:
There's no release date for Clam Man 2 yet, but a free prologue demo build called Clam Man 2: Open Mic is available on itch.io (the trailer is actually for that). The prologue will also be released on Steam on June 19th.

Are you having a laugh? Why is this on the front page?
 

Grauken

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Mar 22, 2013
Messages
13,325
I remember how Vault Dweller once remarked that [INT] and [CHA] gate dialogues, written by people with neither high intelligence nor high charisma, were utterly cringeworthy. I feel like taking on the task of having comedy-related stat checks is, accordingly very risky business.

The comedy is not in the game, but in the discussion surrounding it
 

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