What the Clash?

What the Car, What the Golf, What the Bat - Danish Triband has been quite busy since the launch of their first game back in 2020, but of course, as the titles clearly indicate, these wacky, silly and relatively rudimentary 'comedy games' are closely related, both mechanically, physically and aesthetically. But this is certainly not to be taken negatively, quite the opposite.

What the Clash is the latest addition to the family, and instead of centralising around a single gameplay concept with a multitude of modifications, as we saw in What the Car for example, this is truly a kind of WarioWare, a barrage of mini-games that are continuously modified by a series of cards that you and your opponent can play out and thus quite drastically change the goal and shape of the mini-game in question.

However, it's meant to be played quickly and consistently, in the sense that you can choose to play by yourself or directly challenge friends via a rather minimalistic and puzzle-orientated interface, and then the treasure hunt begins. Initially, you only have table tennis as a kind of platform to which modifications are introduced by each player, but quite quickly, via a kind of personalised scoreboard, you unlock both new mini-games, but also new modification cards for these.

It can actually get quite extensive over time, and something as simple as a modification card with the word 'Board' written on it turns the racing arena into a ski slope with remixed game elements, too. In fact, it could go on and on, and when Triband themselves write 'hundreds of minigames', they mean it, although they are probably referring to the specific modifications the combination of two cards introduces. The point is that these are refreshing enough that it doesn't always feel like you're playing different versions of the same minigame - or at least not all the time.

All of this is of course wrapped up in the aesthetic we know from the series of What the games, which combines a broad colour palette with lovely chunky 3D graphics that ooze with modelable physicality - by which I mean that What the games instinctively invite you to test the physical limits of the game, which is exactly what Triband seems to want, and you are always rewarded with a smile on your face.

Moreover, the same subtle musicality returns here, infecting and enhancing every second of the gameplay loop, from the countdown to each round to the odd little vignettes. In fact, it's music and sound in general that creates much of the comedy in What the Clash, and it's still a delight to the ears.

What the Clash is, despite its many variations, a fairly rudimentary game, however, and that's probably by design. Therefore, even if you draw cards hard and fast to increase the amount of game options you have, it doesn't seem optimal that you have to earn the variation when it's essential to the whole experience. Yes, if What the Clash was intended to be an in-depth game lasting hundreds of hours, but as a quick entertainment fix with a friend, or even alone, then an hour, maybe two, will pass without much modification and access to only two 'platforms'. It should also be mentioned that the game is exclusively 1v1, which quickly becomes a limitation, mostly because this type of quick PvP minigame collection usually allows more people to participate, both to increase the amount of entertaining chaos, but also because this type of game fits very well into a wider setting. While What the Clash goes much further in variety and design than the standard Mario Party mini-game collection, Mario Party (board game or not) wouldn't be as effective if only two players could participate at a time.

That said, you realise almost immediately how charming What the Clash is when you start playing, and as you unlock more clothes for your strange... hand person (?), earning modifications to the mini-games you have access to and challenging friends and strangers alike, it becomes clear how confident Triband are in their design philosophy and how well executed the concept is. It's hard to do anything but recommend Clash to anyone familiar with the studio's wacky games, or those who happen to have an Apple device of almost any kind and could use a bit of a laugh.