This adventure game about a strange clown is absolutely brilliant

boing
1

[Read the post]

2

  1. Interesting overview of the game! I tend to steer away from '90’s nostalgia stuff, but this vibe of pleasure-with-grossness seems like some interesting new ground.

  2. Does Offworld have a Steam curator list or something? I’d be pretty into looking at a big list o’ recommended games.

1 Like
3

I’ve never understood our cultural fear of clowns.

I still believe it’s just an affectation of teens who want to look “edgy.” They’re the same kids who mutilate Barbie and carve “666” on their notebooks, knowing nothing of scripture, only that it’s the scary evil number. I was one of them. I was insufferable.

1 Like
4

I was righteous insufferable. We would’ve hated each other, no doubt.

3 Likes
5

The lifetime of nightmares are free!

6

I don’t know about that. Clowns, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny are pretty genuinely traumatic to a lot of little kids who know nothing about being “edgy”. Their costumes basically fall into the “uncanny valley” category which is pretty unsettling.

7

My theory is that the clown phobia became more common after serial killer Gacy and that led to Stephen King’s “It”.

9

John Wayne Gacy and Pennywise the clown may have something to do with that.

10

I don’t fear clowns, I just don’t find them entertaining. What’s that called?

11

I’ve seen this exact same opinion expressed here on BBS before – that fear of clowns is some kind of hipster thing. That simply doesn’t make any sense to me, and I find it bizarre that people think that.

When little children are terrified of clowns, they’re not doing it because it’s hip or “edgy.” And they are terrified. Here’s a quote from a study on hospital clowns:

“We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.”

As for @AnthonyI’s serial killer hypothesis, these kids know nothing about the “killer clown” serial killer Gracy, so it can’t stem directly from that. Rather, even if Stephen King’s It was inspired by Gracy, King understood the base creepiness of a clown, and like any good horror writer, he wasn’t creating horror out of thin air but out of something that’s already creepy.

The Joker goes back to the '40s, and The Man Who Laughs back to the '20s. These aren’t strictly clowns, but clearly fit into the same unsettling archetype of the painted, permanently-smiling “other.”

1 Like
12

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.