What the Clash? is an amazing 1-on-1 fever dream from the makers of What the Golf and What the Car.

Apple Arcade owners are some of the most starved gamers out there. Despite paying a monthly fee, we'll often wait so long for a solid new release that when one comes out we're like "oh yeah, I'm still paying for that." But my god, when a new game drops in Apple Arcade, it often drops HARD.

Thus is the case with Triband's newest release What the Clash. Triband, over course, being the makers of What the Golf the chaotic golf game that created quite a bit of memes back in 2019, What the Car the insane puzzle driving game that's currently enjoying a crossover with the Among Us game, and What the Bat the bizarre VR game that had you solving problems Negan style, bat in hand.

This time, with What the Clash they have us focusing on the one realm they've yet to fully sprinkle their crazy spice on, the realm of multiplayer.

The game's premise is simple, you sit across from the opponent and you pick what game you're going to play by selecting one of the cartridges you've collected as you've leveled up. If you both pick different games a round of spin the bottle will determine which one is played. The game is put into a console and you play a very vanilla version of whatever game you picked.

The Cartridge Selection screen.

For the next round you bust out your deck of cards and you each play a card. Those cards are then wedged into the game system creating some sort of effect. For example, if you just did a round of racing (which is a foot race) and I play a Barrel card and the opponent plays the Propeller card, you'll find a mode called "Do A Barrel Roll" in which you're suddenly racing in planes dodging exploding barrels floating through a canyon.

The Giraffe card and the Food card created Cake it Easy, a variation of archery where you shoot the tongue out of a giraffe, frog style, to snag cakes floating on balloons. Like you do.

Each game has a wide variety of things that can happen to them based off the cards in play. It can turn the race into a downhill snowboarding race, can add high speed winds to a game of archery, or produce an oblong shaped ball in a game of ping-pong. Some of these can make the games INCREDIBLY hard for both sides turning it from a game of "who can do better" to "who won't do worse".

In this variation of tennis, both players use sticks (which are harder to hit with) and there are multiball power ups that appear over the table making it more frantic.

My least favorite in Ping Pong was one in which your paddle is on a massive vertical spring and you swing it by hitting it with a stick and hoping to god your paddle swings in the direction you want it to. But at the same time there's a silent (screaming) comfort in knowing your opponent also gets to deal with it.

As time goes on you unlock more and more games and card packs as well as ways to customize your hand avatar (havatar?) meaning that whenever you need a good five minute competition there's always something bizarre and interesting awaiting you.