Betrayal at Club Low is a Western RPG, self-described as a One-Shot Tabletop RPG with Cosmo D as the Game Master, set in the Off-Peak City universe. The game was developed by Cosmo D Studios and released on September 9th, 2022 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
You play as an undercover agent posing as pizza delivery to infiltrate the nightlife of Club Low and extract another undercover agent stuck there, something easier said than done with all the security and colorful characters there.
The main gameplay consists of upgrading and rolling your dice against the opponent's to pass their skill check. There are also customizable Pizza Dice which can be arranged to provide money, healing, and further dice manipulation.
The main skills consist of:
- Cooking: Demonstrate your understanding of food.
- Deception: Lie, sneak, and go through the pockets of everyone in the club.
- Music: Attune and show off your musical knowledge.
- Observation: Take in every detail.
- Physique: Power through with your body.
- Wisdom: Reach others with reason and understanding.
- Wit: Cut through the tension with charm and humor.
Betrayal at Club Low provides examples of:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Chad Blueprint, the DJ, will lose some composure and gain a negative die to represent it if told that their mother came to the club to watch over them.
- Bavarian Firedrill: A trademark of Deception rolls where the PC acts like he belongs. The Deception checks for opening doors and laser gates is to sound as authoritarian as possible and claim to be security.
- Big Ball of Violence: Taking the guards on in a fight leads to a big dustball of violence in the background of the dice rolls.
- Delivery Guy Infiltration: Subverted. The PC is disguised as pizza delivery, but nobody at the club is fooled by it. The first challenge of the game is actually getting inside the building.
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: Dice upgrades cost double the money for each tier raised, starting at $2 to upgrade a 0-1 face, $4 to upgrade a 2 face, and so on to impractical amounts at $128 to upgrade a 7 face and $256 to upgrade an 8 face.
- Dumb Muscle: Some Physique rolls have the player character overcoming technical challenges with sheer brute force, such as overloading a security terminal by pounding the buttons or successfully hot-wiring a car.
- Dumpster Dive: There's a dumpster by the Club Low's side entrance that offers an Observation check to rummage through it.
- The Empath: Merging your consciousness with the security terminal gives a permanent condition for seeing emotions, represented as an additional die for Wisdom rolls with 1/3rd chance for +2, +4, or 1 Health damage.You can see what other people are *really* after.
- I Ate WHAT?!: If the PC successfully threatens to call the health inspector on the chef, she'll panic and admit that days old fruit is served in the Green Room. Heading there and telling that information to Jorg will have him express disgust and give him a die with both positive and negative sides.
- Impossibly Cool Clothes: The gem-encrusted coat will magically fit the player character and is dazzling enough to permanently give all opponents a die that has a 1/3rd chance of healing your Nerve by 1, lowering their roll by -1, or nothing. Of course, this coat is gained by deceiving the coat-check attendant and Big Mo will not be happy to see you wearing his coat, with a skill check needed to calm them down.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
- The PC has 1 to 3 rerolls for all his dice in each skill check attempt depending on the session's chosen difficulty.
- Each Truth Pepper rolled will allow you to reroll one of the opponent's dice during the next reroll attempt.
- Mask of Power: The PC can convince the masked individual to give up their skull mask. Doing so grants a permanent condition for Physique rolls that has a 1/3rd chance of +2, +4, or 1 Nerve damage.Wearing the mask, energy of a fierce beast flows through you.
- Multiple Endings: The game boasts eleven of them with the TVs on the main menu changing to reflect each one obtained.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Jumping over the bar counter will have the PC pump himself up first by doing handstand pushups on the counter. Succeeding the check will have him leap far off screen before landing on his feet and subsequent leaps over the bar counter will repeat the animation each time.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: Downplayed. A Physique-based PC can take on the giant guards in a fight, but health damage is guaranteed from the scuffle.
- Not Completely Useless: For the most part, challenges with Cooking checks only contribute a condition die for the opponent or have an alternative check that passes the conversation with a skill that isn't so rare to use. However, passing the Cooking check with Jorg, Chad Blueprint's manager, will net a unique topping: the Durian, which swaps the main die of you and your opponent.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- The PC can convince key NPCs (the chef, security room guard, audio engineer, and Chad Blueprint) to leave while he gains access to their positions.
- Gemini Jay will cut and run unless a skill check is passed due to him prioritizing his job with the Octagon. If failed, the handler will also cut and run while abandoning the PC.
- Skill Scores and Perks: The game has seven skills: Cooking, Deception, Music, Observation, Physique, Wisdom, and Wit. Each skill is represented by a six-sided die; each face of the die can be upgraded with increasing amounts of money to raise the value.
- Sticky Fingers: A Deception-focused PC can successfully pickpocket keys, toppings, and money from the club's inhabitants, though some of the skill checks are one-time only.
- Video Game Randomizer: 4AM mode gives each opponent an additional random die with sides that could be beneficial or utterly devastating. For example, the "Evil" die has a 1/3rd chance of a x0 money multiplier, lowering the opponent's roll by -4, or a remaining 1/3rd chance split between 4 Health damage or 4 Nerve damage.
- World of Mysteries: Both the setting in general and the story in specific are presented without any context whatsoever.
- The setting is Off-Peak City, a surreal low-polygon urban landscape that looks like something imagined during an acid trip in a planetarium. It raises a lot of questions with no answers.
- The player is given the bare minimum of information required to establish the goals of the game (you are an agent of an unspecified agency who is to extract another agent from the titular Club Low), and the story never goes outside those boundaries.
