Game EXP: The Children of Clay (VSD)

The Children of Clay
Systems: Windows, Steam OS, Linux
Release Date: March 7, 2025
Publisher: Balazs Ronyai
Developer: Balazs Ronyai
Time Spent: 22 Minutes
Playthrough Video on YouTube

The Children of Clay is a first-person stop-motion horror and archeology game where you're primarily sitting at a desk, looking over a recovered artifact as strange things begin to happen.  At your desk, you have a candle, matches, a magnifying glass, a compass, a note pad, and several research books (that I believe function as a single entity).  Part of what makes this game so terrifying is that for two-thirds of the game, you're stationary in your chair, unable to move.  If anything were to happen, you would be forced to watch.  It's like that long shot in The Exorcist after the priests leave Regan's room, but the camera lingers in that room, just waiting.

Progress in the game happens as you uncover information, either by examining the clay figure or by reading the books; there are possibly other hidden mechanics that I didn't recognize, which I am very much in support of.  Because the game is filmed in stop-motion with a VCR aesthetic filter, changes can occur in the game during a single missing frame that the player likely won't notice.  For instance there might be some faint writing on the back of the clay figure and only after you pull the magnifying glass to get a better look, a crack will appear on the face of the figure when you rotate it back.  The spoken words of the player character are all through text, which doesn't take away from the game, and likely helps to enhance the horror rather than be potentially ruined by an off-reading by a voice actor or the player thinking, "That's not how I would've reacted.  That was a little over the top."

I first played this on the Steam Deck before I got my new laptop, and while it played fine, the only thing I didn't really enjoy was having to pull up the virtual keyboard to type in the search bar for the books.  I was also playing in bed at night with the lights turned off, so I couldn't make my own notes to then look up in-game, which is why my typing was as slow as it was in the video.  Had I played on a PC, I would likely have tried searching the books a lot more than I did.

The Children of Clay was a short game, only 22 minutes from start to finish, although if I had spent more time searching the books, I likely could have found out more background information, possibly some more flavor text, and maybe expanded on the game a bit more than what I have in my video.  I really (really) hope that Balazs Ronyai (u/EdmondDantees) releases more games and that this wasn't just a one-off passion project, because the small amounts of lore teased were fun, the atmosphere was oppressive and at times terrifying, and I would love to have a similar game that runs for a couple of hours.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
All I Feel, Truth of Lies