-KLAUS- (Switch)
For those working a particularly soul-crushing office job, it can feel like you’re just an interchangeable piece of a larger workforce, practically trapped in your office all day with no true control over your life. For the office worker Klaus though, all these things are very much true. While literally tapped in his workplace he finds his coworkers are eerily similar in appearance to him, but most surprising of all is the fact he really is not in control of his own actions. Instead, Klaus is quite aware that you, the player, are commanding his every movement, and as you lead him through his escape attempt in this platformer, he’ll talk directly to you in the hopes of finding any sort of life beyond the walls of his workplace.
-KLAUS-, often written simply as Klaus, begins when your curious relationship with Klaus does. Klaus finds himself with amnesia and uncertain why he finds himself in the basement of a massive office building, so when you start pressing buttons on your controller to get him to move, he’s quite willing to go along with it. Klaus’s speech appears as text on the environment, and while he literally calls you Player after a bit, the metatextual elements feels like a curious structural touch rather than being a major component of the narrative. There are efforts to root video game ideas like checkpoints into a tiny bit of logic for the world and there are a few levels where a squabble between you and Klaus can lead to your control over him becoming disrupted, but the bigger story element arises once you run into K1, a large muscular man who looks a great deal like Klaus. K1 has a simpler outlook on life and Klaus does not gel well with him after their first rather violent meeting, but K1’s more pleasant straightforwardness balances out Klaus’s more acerbic and introspective side, a heart and a mind for the tale that gives us something personal before the mystery of Klaus’s existence and workplace is more fully laid bare.
When playing as Klaus, you’ll find there really isn’t much he can do. Running, double jumping, and hacking consoles to activate doors is about all he can manage, and there is a reasonable range of dangers you’ll overcome with this small selection. Circular saw launchers, crumbling ground, enemies that charge you or hurl coffee cups your way, your movement is your only way of overcoming them as the humble office worker since he lacks any attack. However, you as the Player can interfere with his world in a few ways. Specific doors, platforms, and similar devices can be activated and moved by the player. Sometimes this is just to open the way onward or carry Klaus across a gap, but over time it evolves into ideas like moving barriers to block lasers or even solving little puzzles entirely on your own as you push a key through a small maze-like arrangement. The Player controlled objects feels like -KLAUS-‘s defining gimmick, consistently present even when regions of the office building start exploring ideas more specific to their theme like the electrical area. However, outside those areas that are specifically puzzles you perform with almost no involvement from Klaus himself, the platform and wall movement doesn’t feel like it pushes the game towards being focused more on thought than action. You do need to properly use each interactive object you find, but moving Klaus at the right times can feel like the more crucial skill. For that reason, some levels can feel like they aren’t asking enough of you to keep the platforming consistently engaging, but there are a few extra elements that do spice up the play from time to time.
Once you meet K1, he actually joins you as a secondary playable character, there being moments where you have the burly K1 running side by side with Klaus. Commanding them at the same time is fairly easy since you just need to hold down a button to do so, but K1 does have unique skills. His greater might lets him break through barriers and defeat enemies, and he even uses the shreds of his uniform as a cape to glide with. K1 can also pick up Klaus and hurl him fairly high or far, and managing the abilities of the two to overcome a level adds an extra layer to the stages that star both of them. Admittedly, Klaus feels like he offers little compared to his burlier doppelganger, levels that have you control them separately often just breaking them up by having K1 be too large to go through the same areas as Klaus. K1’s more flexible moves make him more enjoyable to play as since he has greater control over his situation, but the game also doesn’t oppose him as well as it does Klaus, laying out a fair few simple gliding sections rather than exploring more ways K1’s abilities could be tested. Admittedly, the penultimate world of -KLAUS- is a fairly creative one with the different levels rolling out new mechanics rapidly and in ways that ask you to think a lot more about things like laying out a conducive level in advance or even how your deaths can start to benefit you, but there is some creativity found earlier than that highlight world too.
Most levels in the six worlds of -KLAUS- have a portal to a short secret stage to find. Clearing all of these in a world will unlock a special story-focused level that helps explore some of Klaus’s lost memories through some fairly nice imagery, much of the meaningful narrative found in these technically optional secret areas. Thankfully, -KLAUS- is quite good at making it clear when there is a possible secret level entrance nearby, most split paths set up so you can guess which one hides the portal with ease. A tricky jump or little puzzle might be needed to get in, but the secret stages can engage in some more unusual mechanics since they are not trying to be as believable as the office space. You can find yourself walking on words, commanding multiple Klauses at once that must avoid different dangers, or controlling Klauses of different sizes who may be too small or big for the space you’re exploring. While some are plainer like watching for falling blocks from above, these secret areas inject a different type of challenge between the more usual focus on running through hostile spaces, the player made to think a bit more about what they’re trying to do than when they’re doing their usual work as the Player. These spaces also are far more abstract or artistic, the regular worlds a bit lost in their almost uniform colors while the more interpretive art and silhouettes of special stages takes -KLAUS-‘s already clean pop art look and adds a striking new quality to it as it supports the story-telling.
The secret stages are far better than the game’s few attempts at boss fights. While the three battles are decent enough ideas in terms of testing the same movement abilities you use in regular stages, dying in one resets a fight that feels slow and repetitive should you have to do it more than once, and the final boss faced when you’ve seen all the secrets has an issue where you can make it unwinnable rather easily and need to reset the game to fix it. Sometimes pausing during a scene can also cause sound effects to end up out of sync, but these are rare stumbles in an otherwise fairly clean experience. Sadly, the bonus Arcade mode you unlock for clearing the game really is just a way to return to previous levels and look for portals if you did happen to miss them rather than some brand new twist to bring you back.
THE VERDICT: While it puts its best ideas behind secrets and a creative penultimate world, -KLAUS- is still mostly an effective platformer with some interesting quirks. The mystery of Klaus’s situation has intriguing developments, the Player being an in-world character adds an interesting dynamic with the two playable heroes, and the secrets needed for the true ending are a delight to find and play. However, the main adventure can feel like it’s ideas aren’t evolving quickly enough, the regular platforming losing its charm when its often cut from the same cloth even when whatever you’re timing your runs past or gliding around might have changed appearance.
And so, I give -KLAUS- for Nintendo Switch…
An OKAY rating. -KLAUS- does iterate and evolve its platforming over the course of the adventure, but not in the big exciting ways that would make it a compelling quest. Some of this may be just because of an unwillingness to push things too far. The earlier mentioned sections where Klaus breaks away from player control or responds oddly to your inputs are surprisingly easy, perhaps out of fear they’d be annoying if they really tested how well you can protect him or move while playing in this new way. That doesn’t mean regular levels lack challenge, you often have to jump around loads of spikes, keep ahead of moving dangers, or fight against wind and conveyor belts to survive, the basics of the movement sound and enjoyable on a base level. Cordoning off its most creative shake-ups to short sections though does mean -KLAUS- isn’t really stretching its legs in terms of level and puzzle design, hence why I even hesitated to call it a puzzle platformer. Avoiding danger is the main trial and then occasionally a short level or secret stage focuses more on figuring things out, but there is usually at least some thought put into movement thanks to the Player’s control of the very objects Klaus and K1 use to move around. The bosses could do with their own mid-fight checkpoint to tidy them up, but otherwise -KLAUS- should have been more bold in altering the standard play so that there are fewer stretches where it feels like you’re not facing particularly new obstacles.
-KLAUS-‘s story does do good work more consistently than its platforming at least. While some elements of its twist are obvious enough from the start, the deeper layers added through the secret areas as well as having Klaus speak directly to you and struggle to get along with K1 makes for a nice undercurrent that drives the player forward more than the promise of what platforming challenge lies ahead. -KLAUS- doesn’t feel like it ever gets outright dull since even its small changes prevent staleness from setting in, this platformer still an interesting journey for a few hours even if the story and the platforming could have afforded to hit a little harder to pull the player in more effectively.