When I was in my twenties, a night out at a club was the highlight of my week, especially if there was a DJ that I liked so much. I’m not referring to one of those sprawling sound department superclubs that need a map to find a bathroom. I’m talking about a small, humble community club with proper water drinks, cool dark alcoves, and a small dance floor where you can work your way into a higher state of consciousness in the midst of a crowd of constantly beating bodies. I haven’t done this in decades, but I’m bringing it all back tonight for a night in an off-peak city – a place full of anthropomorphic brownstones, hallucinogenic puddles, and the incomparable Club Low. A surreal metropolis for some urgent business.
The brains behind the Off-Peak universe is composer/musician and game designer Cosmo D, with a brilliantly quirky narrative adventure centered around music, performance, and good old-fashioned capitalism. The games can be enjoyed on their own, but they’re all cohesive offshoots of a bigger, weirder tree; Norwood Suite (2017) remains a personal favorite for combining the mundane with the seductive mythology of Off-Peak, while Club Low The Betrayal is also no different in tone and theme. But as a narrative-driven dice game (the first off-peak world to feature such a disparate mechanic), Cosmo D deftly taps into the insatiable lizard brain of my long-dormant inner club kid—after my first playthrough. After that, my Miqi Wudi Gao successfully went out at night, and I immediately wanted more.
I play a lowly pizza spy working for the mysterious intelligence agency The Circus. In this world, pizza is a cultural cornerstone that requires serious respect and craftsmanship. My biting manager, Murial, shows up with a mission: infiltrate Club Low and rescue a fellow agent from local thug Big Mo, who appears in the 2020 off-peak city story. Betrayal continues Tales’ secret operation as a pizzaiolo thread, but while previous games were structured more like exploratory point-and-click vignettes, this one is more of a study of strategy and social engineering.
Tonight, it’s all about cooking “pizza dice” with different toppings in a conveniently placed oven. Some toppings are multipliers that increase the tips I get from handing out pizza, some replenish my energy and nerve bars, and some manipulate the opponent’s dice. The cash is used to enhance skills like observation, intelligence, and wit, which are reflected in my skill dice. Dice was my only friend in the club, which was full of people with their own private agendas. On the second run, I realized that the game tends to use cheating, physique, and music as the most useful skills, at least on the “Typical Thursday” and “Wild Night” difficulties.
Each action involves skill dice and conditional dice. For example, using Observation for dumpster diving triggers a throw of an apparently unhelpful condition “Smelling Like The City” which will adversely affect my next throw. A failed dice roll could incur a “Thrown-Off” – a neurological debuff that could have resulted in a death sentence if I was already nervous. I might end up supporting my opponents by making them suspicious. Identifying the right conditions, such as Clever or Zoned In, can help me defeat a formidable foe. (In general, if you’ve played enough dice board/video games, the dice stuff is pretty intuitive.)
How Club Low’s betrayal transcends another dimension in what I can only describe as Cosmo D’s psychological sorcery, as a musician who knows exactly how to work for a crowd (or in this case, a player Work). My choice to enter the club sparked a range of related public anxiety, from cutting the line to courting the doorman. Are there any of us who haven’t tried sneaking into a place they shouldn’t be? Plus, Club Low isn’t just an ordinary night—the hugely popular DJ Chad Blueprint (heir to Norwood Suite legend DJ Bogart) is behind the deck and people are eager to get in. And all sorts of delightful personal baggage comes into play – I’m a terrible dancer, so it’s kind of comforting to use my dance to make people so uncomfortable that they’re willing to avoid me entirely (which of course also Triggered a lot of creepy personal memories of late 90s/00s clubs (late).
It’s a game of endless excitement about gambling with endorphins and escaping mischief, which fits perfectly with the essence of dice games. Not only does it remind me of the clown thing I used to sneak into the console section or VIP section, but it reminds me of 1999 with an equally iconic soundtrack. Even when things go so horribly wrong, there’s always a chance that something right could have happened. Recovering from blunders and mistakes is one of the most redemptive tropes in the social club setting, when awkward outliers finally get their moment in the proverbial sun (of course, in these strictly nighttime games, we get from never saw the light of day). That said, the Chad blueprint is forever, but with the right knowledge and skills, even a pizza guy like me can replace him.
Club Low itself is a beautiful epitome of entertainment capitalism, continuing Cosmo D’s long tradition of living off the material cost of making a living. It’s not just about having “fun,” but a whole class of people who work nights, do multiple jobs, and work behind the scenes to support institutions like Club Low. There is a large group of characters involved in various scenarios involving real life issues – piracy and piracy, unethical business contracts, part time jobs, lack of fair labor practices are just a few of them. Chef worries about her flamingo stew – which needs to be worthy of Dae-mok’s finicky palate – and breaching health regulations; manager Kathryn is typical as she ponders anti-labor measures to get the most value out of her subordinates The landowner is insane. Interestingly, considering how much trouble I had getting into Club Low, it turned out that most of the staff just wanted to get out and hang out with their friends elsewhere.
But really, the place where everything comes together is supposed to be on the little dance floor at Club Low, where I bravely try to be one with the animals in the crowd (one of the examples where physique and music really come in handy) . Cosmo D’s soundtrack has always been consistent, and this one is no exception—even through the screen, the public intimacy and telepathy generated through Cosmo D’s dance vision is far more powerful than watching an earlier Boiler Room scene. The game’s chaotic momentum is perfectly in sync with each beat, like a conscious undercurrent of sonic dynamics, reminding me to keep going. If I conquer the dance floor and win my partner, it’s arguably one of the most winning moments of the competition.
With my success, I decided to tackle the hardest difficulty in 4AM mode, which fills NPCs with random unpredictable behavior. Normally I don’t torture myself like this, but I got hooked. The game advised me to make a plan, but I put caution behind me and continued to assign my skill points and make decisions impulsively. Making money is hard, and every condition is a potential landmine. I also only have a small amount of energy and nerves – 3 of each – which means that any dangerous situation (e.g. a roll that causes -4 nerves) could spell doom for me. Progress is incremental, and energy is suddenly more important than in previous games. Any debuff roll from my opponent can forget me in one shot. I wrap it all up like a masochist – it’s the craziest club ever.
Betrayal of Club Low is already one of my favorite games of the year, and one of my favorite Cosmo D games to date. There’s something oddly comforting about seeing unique off-peak monuments and buildings, like seeing an old friend manage to learn some delightful new tricks. My next personal challenge is to try Iron Pizza mode – kind of like permadeath where I only get one save file, in this mode I definitely need to think more about strategy and skill distribution.But in my own great tradition, when it comes to the art of going out – well, at least when I used Get out – where’s the fun in there?
