CLeM Review — The Dark Below The Surface

CLeM features hard puzzles, fantastic art, and a world that hides a secret darkness below its adorable surface.
Clem Featured

You awaken in a dark, damp basement. Your head is heavy, and your arms and legs feel like rough, textured cloth stuffed with an unknown substance. You don’t know where you are or who you are, yet you hear a stranger’s voice in your head. And you know you must obey. It gives you a singular, vague command, yet you are driven to follow: ‘Bring me beauty.’

CLeM is a puzzle exploration game where you play as a tiny potato sack golem driven by the strange orders of your master. Each day, you are tasked with collecting the avatars of each attribute written about in your mysterious notebook, following the esoteric commands of “bring me beauty,” “bring me determination,” and so forth. As you follow the orders of the witch upstairs, you explore a beautiful yet abandoned house, finding clever ways to complete your tasks and learning the history of the family that once lived there.

Clem Basement
Screenshot: Try Hard Guides

CLeM is a journey packed with themes of witchcraft, family, and subtle darkness. The cute, hand-drawn exterior of the game hides, if ever so slightly, the dark nature beneath. Walking through the desolate, once grand halls of this family home, reading old letters and journal entries while listening to the droning, ominous, and depressing scores of the soundtrack, gives you the constant feeling that something isn’t right in this place. That clever combination of cute and creepy becomes even more creepy as you progress through the game.

Staying true to the game’s themes of witchcraft and strangeness are the game’s puzzles, which can simultaneously be described as creative, esoteric, and confusing. Simple problems do not have simple solutions, and no answer to any of the game’s puzzles is what I would describe as obvious. It’s safe to say that you’re going to need to think creatively to get through many of CLeM’s challenges, though your collection of magical tools will help you along the way.

Clem Spider
Screenshot: Try Hard Guides

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not great at puzzle games. For players similarly challenged inquisitively, one reliable method of making progress in these games is by interacting with everything you’re allowed to until things start to click together, sometimes stumbling into a solution by accident.

This isn’t a viable approach in CLeM. As you explore the house, you’re more or less confined to a few rooms at first, with more opening up in later days and puzzles. However, just because you can interact with something doesn’t mean it’s relevant to the task at hand. Many rooms you enter will feature puzzles and secrets only to be discovered at a later date when you have access to more tools. There’s no flipping switches until something works in CLeM.

Clem Garden
Screenshot: Try Hard Guides

To add to this, the game features a noticeable lack of guidance that can make solving its puzzles all the more difficult. I can recall the game giving me a tip once, but I’m unsure what prompted it and why. I had no such luck in later, more challenging puzzles. If you struggle with CLeM’s puzzles and puzzle games in general, as I do, this can lead to some of the levels taking upwards of an hour to complete. I often found myself at the very end of a puzzle without knowing it, retracing my steps in an attempt to find something I missed when it was right in front of me the whole time.

One such example of a puzzle I somewhat struggled with was the game’s lockpicking mechanic. By using a magical key, you can pick all the locks around the home open and gain access to hidden goodies and puzzle solutions. To open a lock, you adjust several rocks on your magical key so that they push the pins correctly and open the door.

It was unclear to me if there were visible solutions or some sort of logic to be found by looking at the pins before adjusting the rocks on the key. Perhaps an understanding of how exactly rocks worked would have helped. What I ended up doing was moving each rock up or down a single nudge until, by inserting the key into the lock, I saw the indicator showing that the pin was in the right place. This solution felt janky, tedious, and not very clever on my part, but for all I know, it was exactly what the game intended for me to do, though I somehow doubt it.

Clem Witch
Screenshot: Try Hard Guides

As you continue through the game, these puzzles will only become harder and require stronger logic on your part to complete. To be honest, I can’t exactly call this a downside. What kind of puzzle game would it be if the puzzles were easy to solve? Besides, players who struggle similarly to me will have the advantage of guides posted by their peers, so you won’t have to worry about being stuck in one place for too long.

CLeM tells its story and displays its world through beautiful, hand-drawn artwork and clever interactions with the environment. I was particularly fond of how you collect clues for later puzzles in the game. Within your notebook, you’ll instantly jot down notes and sketches about important scenes you encounter throughout the house. If you collect a letter or journal entry, you’ll tear it from its source and paste it into your book. As you progress deeper into the game, your once-empty journal starts to burst at the seams, with information displayed in an immersive and realistic way.

The Final Word

CLeM is a brilliant little puzzle game, filled with a constantly eerie vibe that pairs well with its cute, innocent art style. This cartoon world hides a deeper darkness, and to find it, you’ll have to solve clever puzzles and learn all you can about the fate of the family that came before.

8

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! CLeM is available on Steam.

Erik Hodges

Erik Hodges

Erik Hodges is a hobby writer and a professional gamer, at least if you asked him. He has been writing fiction for over 12 years and gaming practically since birth, so he knows exactly what to nitpick when dissecting a game's story. When he isn't reviewing games, he's probably playing them.

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