Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink (Part 1)

For the record: 275 games.

Anyone who’s been on Steam for a long time has amassed a large collection of games. Summer and winter mega-sales, Humble Bundles and the like, this all leads to massive piles of games that are sitting in place in one’s computer, with many of these games never played… or played for all of 30 minutes and then dropped quickly. And yet, we all started there: As young and naïve Steam users, who knew that the selection of games on the platform was humongous, but could only buy a few at the start.

Do you remember your first Steam games? I remember mine. Aside from downloading a lot of free MMORPGs (a move I regret now since I played only two and soon uninstalled every other one) and a lot of free and free-to-play titles, the first games I actually remember buying were Undertale and Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink. It’s a weird combo, huh? Well I added 15$ to my Steam Wallet because Undertale costs 9.99$ in the U.S. but costs 10.99$ in Canada, goddamn stupid exchange rates, and I had to spend those last 4 dollars on something… but I digress. So yeah, I looked at the selection of games and took the first thing that would cost approximately what I had left. Undertale review? Yeah, no, not today, sorry. It would be a gigantic review, I’d need a special occasion for it. Like an anniversary, maybe. (Hint, hint.) Today, I need something smaller. So, Clockwork Tales it is.

Item searches have been a staple of puzzle games for a while. I remember, long ago, reviewing a game like that for the blog. What was it called again? Sunnyville? Yeah. It’s a sub-genre that offers its own challenges, but it’s usually pretty bland if it’s all there is to do in a game. I’ve always felt that the Item Search sub-genre worked better when put within a story context, with some additional puzzles. On this, Clockwork Tales delivers, offering various puzzles with a few Item Search screens. Also, this story takes place in a steampunk world with plenty of world-building, so it could be interesting.

We open as our protagonist Evangeline Glass arrives in the calm mountain town of Hochwald. A letter from her mentor, Professor Ambrose Ink, asked her to go there. Glass, Ink… odd family names, no?

Oooooooh…. I get it now! Clever.

If the rest of his body moved, it wouldn't be nearly as
creepy.

Evangeline enters the nearby Gearwheel Inn and meets with Doctor Ink, who… Oh God. I’m not quite sure what they were going for with this animation, but it’s so wrong. This story-heavy game is fully-voiced, you see, and it’s also animated. Minimal animation is fine for larger scenes, but a close-up of a major character should be animated better than it is here. See what happens with Doctor Ink: His body barely moves, heaving or breathing with only slight movements. But the CGI head moves all the time! And seems separate from the body, so even the beard seems to have its bottom indented into the static body, while the rest of the hair follows the movements of the face. It’s really frikkin’ weird to look at. Could it be described as “uncanny valley”? Oh, and this applies to all of the other NPCs, bearded or not. Better get used to it!

Either Ink likes the chilly air and opening the window
just wouldn't be enough, or the maintenance at this inn
is desperately lacking.

We follow Ink to his room in the Inn, but before he can explain anything, something breaks through the wall and kidnaps him. Well, this is a steampunk universe. I blame a giant robot. Evangeline begins her investigation. For an Inn, there sure seems to be a lot of problems here. The door to Room 2 has no handle, the barmaid has no booze – and I could use a drink right now – and even some decorations around the place are missing parts. Now, Ambrose Ink may be gone, but his pet robot bird Matthew, which is still here, has “all the answers”. Buuuuut…. It was broken, so you have to repair it. Should be easy, Ink’s room is a mess of copper robotic parts. A first item search level follows, where the robot pieces are cleverly hidden… over other robots. Talk about basic. Another major puzzle involves a toolbox hidden near a gate, with 4 compartments that must be opened with the correct-shaped items, all of which can be found on the scene and gathered through logical associations of items. Through this, Evangeline finds a cube that will power up Matthew.

I will say, though; Matthew the robot-birdie is very,
very cute.

Talk about a weird name for a bird, by the way. I suppose Robin would have been too obvious? The power cube’s battery has run out though, so you have to find something to power it up. It’s in Room 2… but to enter it, you need the key AND a working handle!

Man, being a spy is so hard! Thankfully, using her wits (or yours), Evangeline gets in the room, powers up Matthew, and sees that Doctor Ink was trying to get images of a mysterious machine beneath the castle past the gate at the end of the street. A machine causing tremors all around the region.

Other steampunk supervillains are taking copious
notes right now.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? Ink was investigating strange earthquakes and realized that the epicenter was Hochwald. Oh good, I love venturing into places where I could see new heights on the Richter scale! My favorite pastime of them all! I guess we have to get into that castle now. That’s when we see, by the hole in the wall, a giant robot – HA! CALLED IT! – with Ink in a cage on its back. Things are only going to get more puzzling from there. Oh, and in case we were hoping to pass by the front door of the castle… Nope! The giant robot takes flight and smashes a nearby mountain, causing an avalanche that utterly blocks the entrance. Guess Evangeline will have to find a different way in. As if that wasn’t enough, a robotic caterpillar belonging to the bad guys snaps a photo of our spy lady before fleeing. How do we know it’s the villain’s robot? It’s all black and red. You’d think some bad guys by now would have caught on that this combo of colors would immediately raise suspicions. Although, all I can think of is that technology in that world has come a long way since the days of the giant mechanical spider.

The film is crap, I just love to reference that thing.

Can I have your helmet? It will count as your contribution
to the Swear Jar for almost saying "bitch" in a game for kids.

Of course, we have a main quest in saving Doctor Ink from the villain, but for some unfathomable reason every quest from an NPC ends up tying into the greater story. To infiltrate the villain’s headquarters, we need a full-body uniform of the soldiers out there. Gee, good thing there’s a shirt floating just outside our room! Good thing a pair of pants can be found pretty easily! And good thing one lonely, jobless soldier in the Inn will exchange his helmet for a glass of alcohol! (Yes, you have to mix the drink through a puzzle, but it’s actually pretty easy.) And of course, just around that time, a zeppelin has showed up at a nearby landing station for the soldiers, so we can sneak aboard in our new gear!

How should we build the Barber emblem?
By scavenging multiple pieces!

Quite a few things to do here. The caterpillar robot is there, so we dispatch it using the nearby tools and Matthew the robot-bird is strong enough to topple a crate onto it. Then, we need to go back down, and the glider outside seems perfect; however there are guards surrounding it, and a wing is broken. That’s okay, let’s just: Sneak into the cockpit, attract the guards inside, pass by from the outside by attaching a rope to the side of the ship, collect a flag, find a wrench to get 5 bolts around the place, build the emblem of Barber, the tyrant of Hochwald, use that emblem to open a chest, find the bones of a wing, build a wing using the bones, the bolts and the flag, and I think I lost track at Step F. Why do puzzle games has the heroes following plans with so many steps that there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet?

Finally, Evangeline Glass is able to leave the zeppelin using the glider, but the soldiers shoot at her and she crashes into the castle’s backyard. What’s worse, the key to open the gate was stolen by a squirrel. What happens next can be called An Exercise In Convenience. This is basically every single scenario in a puzzle game where you find, in a single screen, the dozen or so items required to move forward to the next important screen. I know, that’s the whole point of the genre – although items found in a location don’t always make complete sense. Here alone, we get a chain from the crashed glider, toss a snowball at an owl, gather snow in a bucket and melt it over a hot air passage that is conveniently laying nearby… I gotta avoid the word “convenient”. I keep using that word all the time. The water is used to unfreeze a barrel, to get a stepladder laying behind it – or is it a ladder? I swear, I always confuse ladders and stepladders, but hey, at least I’m not the only one. Who leaves a (step)ladder laying there, frozen in the snow, anyway? We get a lysflower-shaped spade, break some ice to collect a hook frozen underneath. Again, I ask: Who would leave a hook there? Then we attach the hook and chain together, and get the key from the squirrel’s nest.

Oh, and then that’s not all; the lock on the gate leading to the next room requires a key, but it’s actually a puzzle to complete. Not a very tough one, either. Seems Lord Barber, the villain, only wants smart people to be able to come into his lair. That’s good, but his adversaries, the heroic Glass and Ink, are also very smart and can easily bypass these puzzles…

Or maybe he’s just obsessed with puzzles, like the Riddler or something.

Not that this matters since, as soon as we unlock the door… we’re caught by the giant robot and thrown into a cell. Oopsie.

XCan we call this guy a Nazi even if the game is technically
set long, long before WWII?

A mouse? Why would I need to pick up a MOUSE?

Thankfully, Matthew hasn’t been caught, so from her prison cell Evangeline is able to call for him to come towards her. Gee, how great it is that the prison cell had everything nearby to let her escape! How conv… No, I said I should try to avoid that word! We try to follow Barber, but he gets into an elevator and goes to the basement, leaving two large humanoid robots to guard it. On the plus side, we’re now given access to a kitchen, with a hidden objects puzzle in there, and with some tweaking we can even use a hidden elevator to get to the reading room upstairs, collect a key, and access a balcony, from which we go through more puzzles in order to drop a chandelier on the robotic guardians. Everything is just so conv…. I swear, I was gonna say convoluted, not convenient!

I’ll say, I do enjoy a special aspect of this puzzle game, in that you can send Matthew to fetch items that are out of reach. Sometimes, a situation seems to have no answer, until you remember that you can actually do that. It adds a nice dimension to the puzzles. And I think it has actually allowed this game’s developer, Artifex Mundi, to get more creative with their puzzles. Why force the hero to make a tool to reach that faraway item? Just send the robot-bird!

Barber’s mansion is quite poorly guarded. Aside from the two robots in front of the elevator, there are no guards whatsoever. Evangeline can freely visit upstairs. By collecting colored jewels and completing a puzzle in the fireplace room, she finds a secret passageway to another secret room! In that room, we find instructions to make gunpowder, which is certain to come in handy as soon as we find charcoal, in the fireplace room, and sulfur, in a jewelry cabinet.

Then we can just grab the musket in the living room, add a bullet found earlier, add gunpowder, bring the chandelier closer and just above the guards’ heads.

Pow, clang, onomatopoeias galore as the robotic guards are defeated. It’s not over, though; through more items found in the room the robots stood in, we’re able to acquire secret blueprints and another Barber insignia that will be needed to get into the elevator. Hurrah!

Boom! Don't mess with Evangeline Glass!

I can’t wait to make Barber pay for trying to break the region with earthquakes. I hope he gets a very embarrassing defeat, a humiliation that will make everyone else laugh, oh so much. Something that would be great, accompanied of the famous shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits music. Ironic, on top of all that, for a buy named Barber.

But that’ll have to wait till Monday. Cya!