Clocker

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Clocker, released in 2019 on PC and Xbox One and then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021, is technically a Puzzle-Platformer, though the Platforming is weak and not a prominent part of the gameplay most of the time. In this game, players take the role of a clockmaker who one day finds himself in possession of a magical watch that can rewind and move forward time for the objects and people around him while the rest of the world remains frozen in time. Using this, he tries to piece together missing gears and hopefully repair whatever froze time in the first place so he can reunite with his daughter.

This plays out in the form of puzzles where you must rewind and move forward events to change the order things happen in, or to place certain things or people in the right place at the right time.

For example, one puzzle requires you to get into a locked room and move out the locked window on the other side, but since you can’t lock the door yourself, you have to move forward a burglar breaking into the place so he can open the door for you. Doing so, he startles the man living there, who runs to attack him. As such, you need to rewind both so that the door remains unlocked and the man doesn’t chase after the burglar, so he instead opens the window to let in some air.

Other puzzles have you moving things around to get them out of your way, or to form a platform for you. The game makes good use of the time manipulation mechanic in a variety of ways, to keep things interesting.

Unfortunately, it’s not always consistent. Sometimes when you rewind things, the changes they make are undone, and other times they aren’t. Rewinding the thief back to before he opened the door doesn’t make the door close, but on the floor above where you need an old man to open a cellar door, rewinding him after he opens it causes the door to close. You sometimes have to fiddle with things to find the solution the game wants you to discover.

The presentation here is technically decent, using detailed 2D images for its characters and background, with the characters animated in a “paper doll” style. Unfortunately, I feel like the game’s tone is heavily at odds with its mechanics. Some of the puzzles here are outright silly, like rearranging birds in time so you can walk across them mid-flight, but the game’s tone overall is extremely dour and depressing.

This is particularly true for the protagonist, who is a sad sack of a man who neglects his daughter to favor work and then feels agonized about not spending time with her. This is underlined by the soundtrack, which is filled with sad piano themes that make the game out to be a tragedy, all while you’re making some pretty absurd things happen.

Overall, I do like the idea of Clocker, but I think it could stand to have better execution, and the game’s creators should have taken more time to figure out what tone they wanted to set with the game and whether or not different parts of the game meshed with that tone. As-is, it’s still an enjoyable Puzzle game, and for $4 it’s definitely worth checking out for fans of time-manipulation puzzles. But it feels like it fell short of its potential.

tl;dr – Clocker is a Puzzle-Platformer where players take the role of a clockmaker with a magical stopwatch that can rewind or move forward time for people and objects in an otherwise frozen world. The premise is good, but the execution is inconsistent in its logic, and the presentation feels tonally at odds with some of that gameplay. It’s still a decent game, and well worth the $4 asking price, but it could have been much better.

Grade: B-

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