Clyde’s Game is a romantic tragedy about coping with loss. The story follows the relationship between Clyde, a talented yet hopelessly eccentric game designer, and Lara, an ambitious game producer who sports a cane to support a knee injury. Forced together by contractual obligation, they must find common ground between them to save their innovative save their innovative new gaming project. 
We open on Clyde alone in his dark office as he seeks approval from an unknown source over a text message before Lara arrives to inform him that he is late for a very important meeting with the project investors. They hurry to the conference where it is made clear that the future of their new game, Valid Rage, and the potentially revolutionary technology designed for it, the S.A.M. controller (Simulated Analog Motion, think Guitar Hero meets Halo), may be in jeopardy unless they can generate hype for it at an the upcoming VirtuaCon Game Trade Convention. At the event, the initial presentation of the game is disastrous until Clyde shows off the S.A.M. and its central gimmick; force-feedback-support (simulated recoil). The crowd’s reaction is instantly flipped, and the S.A.M. becomes to talk of the show. The investors throw a party in celebration where Clyde and Lara, having finally discovered common ground with one another, forget their reservations and become romantically involved. They return to Clyde’s office where they continue to be intimate until Clyde receives a cold response to his earlier text, which we now learn was from a contact named “Sam”, and his resolve shatters. As a result he becomes aggressive with Lara, accidentally harming her afflicted leg, destroying their newfound connection. 
Left alone again in his dark office, Clyde finally comes to terms with his fixation on the mysterious Sam, and willingly abandons the S.A.M. to start a new project, which he titles 'Clyde's Game'.