Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink Review – Steampunk Visual Stunner Falls Flat

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink is a Casual adventure, Click-point Hidden-Object Puzzles (HOPs) mystery game with a World War 2 era Steampunk art style. With a flying mechanical raven as your companion after you put him together, flying robots with missiles and a castle with hidden rooms, Clockwork Tales is another game by Artifex Mundi that is a decent looking mystery HOP. Decent looking is about all this game is though. It is a very short game, maybe three hours with distractions. And it wasn’t a very enjoyable game to play.

Clockwork Tales follows the story of Dr. Ambrose Ink who is concerned about a recent onset of earthquakes in Gottland. He traces them to the town of Hochwald, and sends a letter to his protégé Evangeline Glass, a Secret Spy Agent, asking for her to come help in solving this mystery. Soon after arriving and barely talking to Dr. Ink, he is abducted by a giant robot and taken to the local castle and we have to find him using his steampunk mechanical raven Matthew. This guy becomes a handy little companion tool that you get to use to fetch and knock things over with and fight a mechanical centipede that keeps following you around and generally annoying you.

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“Clockwork Tales ends as a disappointing couple hours of play. It may be worth it when the game goes under $5 but before then it just isn’t worth your time.” 

The Steampunk raven and artistry was all I got out of this game. After the first half hour or so of the game it just becomes a grueling chore to play, making you wish you had a padded section of wall to bang your head on. There about 30 different ‘scenes’ in Clockwork Tales that you have to progress through finding items. Several times that you have to collect objects from multiple screens to get an item. Then go back through those same screens to get another item, continuously and repeatedly.

Clockwork Tales is only a single player game and it has 19 achievements for the Xbox One. It was easy to find the objects, not impossible like some I’ve played, but it was enough to be somewhat of a challenge. It mostly has you putting together parts to make or fix stuff that you need to continue on with the game. On the Xbox One there are only two difficulties, normal and expert. Normal gives you a ton of extras and a 30 second timer on the Hint button, while Expert does not have the extras, and a full minute of recharge time for the Hint button. The pointer they give you on the Xbox One is not done well. It is a very large circle you can move around with the joysticks, but whatever you are clicking on MUST be dead center for it to be activated. When it comes to the many small things that you have to collect it becomes somewhat ridiculous. There are several short mini games that were entertaining, if a little tedious because you still have to find objects to use them. After completing the game, you unlock Ink’s Story which takes place a week before Glass shows up. It seemed like a cheap attempt at congratulating you for finishing the game, yet after playing it seems more like a punishment.

One of the things that annoyed me the most was how the characters talked. They talk with their teeth like they’re a horse chomping on some hay. Their head also changes shape and sizes as they are talking. I’d like to know how when talking, the back of your head becomes elongated and oval shaped. It’s extremely annoying and makes you wonder why they Dev’s made it like that. Is it some kind of weird new trend they are trying to start? I sincerely hope it’s not. The voices are well done, not robotic sounding, but I can’t commend them for it because the teeth are all I think of. It has a pretty engaging chill background music, some ups and downs when it’s needed and different sound effects for all the different things you are doing.

After the head changing, talking teeth, back and forth repetitive scenes, Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink ends as a disappointing couple hours of play. It may be worth it when the game goes under $5 but before then it just isn’t worth your time. There is not enough variation in the scenes, just recycling the few that there are until a new area is unlocked. The artistry was nice, I liked the mix of fantasy steampunk it had, but that’s all I can say positively about the game. It was memorable enough in that I will not be playing any of its future sequels.

***An Xbox One review code was provided by the publisher***