Clam Man 2: Open Mic

Clam Man 2: Open Mic is the prologue to Clam Man 2, a combatless narrative RPG adventure. You play as Clam Man on the first day of a week of jokes, quests and odd conversations, following an unlikely quest in an unlikely world. At Snacky Bay Prime Mayonnaise, you uncover a secret in the basement that will change the course of your life. You complete quests, collect material for jokes and perform stand-up.

Stats and dialogue

Seven stats shape your abilities: Aquadynamics for physical performance, Improv for thinking on the spot and coming up with strange ideas, Detection for perceiving the world and reasoning about it, Assertion for confronting and persuading people, Deadpan for keeping your cool and lying, Luck, and Self-Awareness for empathising with yourself and others.

Conversations have branching dialogue and static skill checks that require the right stats. Different character builds can unlock different responses and outcomes. Quests involve character-focused choices and errands, and each has multiple endings. Your choices affect the joke material you receive, so a single playthrough cannot reveal even half of the jokes; seeing everything may take around six fully optimised runs.

Quests and stand-up

You use joke material earned from quests in your shows. Each joke tests your abilities with RPG-style dice rolls, so your stats and the joke you choose affect your chances. Success gives you several ways to develop a joke, while failure still lets you decide how the performance unfolds, including stuttering, awkwardness and bad taste.

No combat

The game has no combat, aside from one part where you can slap someone. Bombing a joke does not cause a game over: it affects how characters see you and can have larger consequences for the full game's story. You can also faint to avoid public speaking, lie to a child, talk to a prehistoric beast, cause an earthquake, or get run over and die.

The prologue

Open Mic contains the full first day of the game, with quests, characters and dialogue. The full game covers a week of jokes and quests.