Clockwork Tales: Of Glass And Ink (Part 2)

Throughout Part 1 of this review, we met Evangeline Glass, and we saw her father figure Ambrose Ink kidnapped by some evil Barber (that’s the villain’s name, he’s not actually a barber), so we investigated the outside of the Inn we started in, ended up in a zeppelin, landed in a castle backyard, got caught, escaped easily, and found our way to the basement. There lies the Tremor Machine used by Barber to cause earthquakes in the region. Our protagonist has managed to do all this without ever applying violence to any actual humans!

Okay, I can buy a giant mechanical spider, but a large
machine right over lava? C'm'on.

She’s like a child-friendly Black Widow! And on top of that, Evangeline is a female protagonist who isn’t sexualized in any way! Sure, we may see her once or twice, and she is attractive, but it’s never alluded to nor does it ever become a point of discussion from other characters!

We are now in the underground area beneath Barber’s castle, right above the magma. Sheesh, you have to wonder how the Hell he was able to build that thing so deep into the Earth! And of course, the bridge to the Tremor Machine has been removed so that Barber can work on it undisturbed, so we have to find a way towards it. Should be easy, we just have to explore that room with various robotic body parts, or maybe the room with that giant machine and a cell, from which we can see Ambrose Ink peeking…

Oh hey, I found him! Well, that was easy.

But we need a robotic hand in order to open his jail cell. Thankfully, there are many spare parts in a nearby room, which Evangeline finds among a mess of other parts. Rule of a Hidden Objects game: Every single place is a mess of objects.

Of course you're shown images of the items rather than
names. How would you name every single piece needed
to build the next thing?

There are actually two types of hidden object levels here: There’s the usual one, where the protagonist just grabs apparently any item she can get her hands on, following a list that includes dozens of items that we simply do not need. Guess Hidden Object game heroes are just that kleptomaniac. Clockwork Tales includes a different kind of Hidden Object level, though: The search for important parts. At least once in each area, Evangeline will be seeking bits and pieces rather than clear items, and she’ll assemble those parts in order to make three larger pieces, which will then merge together into a single item. Since the pieces don’t have names, we instead have pictures of them at the bottom of the screen. We actually do that to rebuild Matthew at the beginning, then later we find pieces to build Barber’s Emblem in order to open a chest. In the underground laboratory, Evangeline is actually able to assemble a robotic arm from the pieces she finds. I actually quite enjoy this addition to the concept of Hidden Object games. It’s clever and helps taking the story further.

Another common occurrence in the game is in the form of multiple similar items scattered around the unlocked zones, which must all be collected to move forward. As an example, in the underground, Evangeline has to find 5 pieces of electronics to put into the robotic arm she just built. Then there’s a puzzle about putting all the pieces on the arm, with a spring. Then we can use that arm to free Doctor Ambrose Ink. Or rather, we can now use his jail cell to stage a sabotage of the Tremor Machine. Just need a chalk and a photo of the actual machine.

Even the lock to Ink's cell involves a puzzle. Barber must
really love those.

Just... how? How is this gonna help?

We get those, and help Ink solve an equation… by checking a diagram on the board and just tracing over all the existing lines without raising the chalk. I… I have no idea how that’s supposed to help. This puzzle, above any other in the game, feels forced and unnecessary. The others are at least on control panels, or stuff of the like… but this one? Nah, no excuse.

Ink devises a plan involving another caterpillar robot, but we need to repair it first. Huh, why am I not surprised. Also, once it’s reprogrammed to be on our side, its red eye switches to a green color. Again, why am I not surprised. What is it with red being always associated with evil? Are there really any heroes in red?

…Oh… yeah… Dammit I feel dumb sometimes.

Piece back together the old one like a puzzle, gather cement,
make it wet, stick the broken piece there, find a silver ingot,
boil it in lava, fill the mold, hop, new piece!

The robot goes to Barber and lies that there are problems aboard his zeppelin, so he leaves, allowing Glass and Ink to reach the machine. We could sabotage it from inside, but first we need to – you guessed it! – repair it. It’s not even that difficult, but once again we have to go through a dozen steps and two Hidden Objects levels to make a new gear, in order to repair the old one found shattered near the machine. At least, once that’s done, we’re given access to the machine’s bowels.

Evangeline has time to go inside the machine, but Ambrose gets caught by Barber and his mechanical hand before he can join. Thankfully, once again, the interior of the machine has all the tools required for it to be irreparably damaged by our Victorian Steampunk Spy Extraordinaire. And damage it, she does! Next, she goes upstairs and sees a robot hard at work nearby, and has a Barber emblem key to take control of it. Only problem, it’s far away. Like that’s ever been a problem! We build a makeshift zipline to get to the robot and take control of it.

That was the end of the game; with the robot, Evangeline saves Ink, captures Barber, all off-screen. We only see them flying out of the molten magma land. That’s all we get as an ending, but hey, I’m satisfied with it.

Well, as interesting as basic pictures may be, anyway.

But wait, there’s more! Completing Evangeline’s story opens a bonus chapter where Ambrose Ink is the protagonist. It’s a prequel taking place a week earlier, and starts with Ink investigating Hochwald Village for definitive evidence that the epicenter of the tremors plaguing the region is here. He gets to his room and sees a caterpillar robot tearing up his research paper on the tremors. Ink sends Matthew to attack the robot, so it hides in the old wood burner. We lure it out by starting a fire (that’s the purpose of the thing it hid in, after all), and catch it in a bottle. Still gotta repair the research, though. That’s okay, we just have to find the missing pieces and put all the pieces together. From there, we see Ink’s research. Very interesting!

Eh, it’s actually just an excuse for more puzzles. It reveals that there’s a secret passageway from the church leading into the castle, but he first needs to find 6 tokens to put on the chapel door to complete yet another puzzle. This is a long task, but we manage to do it. And then, inside the chapel, we must give each of four statues of Saints an item that represents them, in order to unlock the secret passageway.

I do want to question just how come all of those tokens are
in the possession of various people or hidden in very
unlikely places, considering they open the chapel nearby.

Hey, at least it shows that some soldiers are decent.

He finally gets the item for the fourth Saint, but is stopped on the way by a guard working under Barber who has been ordered to kill Ink. However, the guard can’t bring himself to do it, so he leaves his gun at the chapel and leaves… to be fired shortly afterwards and found, a week later, still in his uniform, drinking booze at the Inn, as we meet him there at the start of the story when we play as Evangeline.

Another puzzle follows, requiring a charged battery, but all we can find is an empty battery. How to boost it? Why, arrange something with a metal wire and a fallen kite, both hung to float over an empty zone where lightning frequently falls! Simple, huh? MacGyver: The Steampunk Edition. …Huh, I’m surprised I didn’t come up with that one earlier. Attaching this battery to the stand in the center of the chapel and completing the final puzzle unlocks the secret passageway.

We got the kite, we got the battery, we got the abyss with the
constant thunder strikes. Now all we need is a steel wire
to recharge the battery with Thor's holy thunder power,
and we'l be good to go.

This brings Ink into Barber’s Castle, right in front of the elevator leading underground – and Ink uses Matthew and his built-in camera to take images of the area, many of which turn out important when Evangeline finds herself alone with only Matthew the robot-bird to help her.

Shame that the game won't, for some reason, let me
grab a screenshot past the start of any cinematic
sequence. Weird.

And now we have the full story. Oh, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can move away from the easier difficulty and head into the hardest one. There are three difficulties in the game: Casual, Advanced or Expert. What’s the difference? There isn’t much of a difference, really. The puzzles remain the same; no difference between hidden object levels, no difference between puzzles either – once you’ve beaten a puzzle on Casual mode, you can take it on in the Expert mode, it hasn’t changed one single bit. The differences are cosmetic at most; in Casual, the hints have no limits, you can skip every puzzle quickly, and important areas on the map tend to be highlighted. In Expert, the highlights are rare, and you have to wait at least a full minute between hints during a Hidden Objects screen (like that makes a difference). On top of that, if you try clicking plenty of times in a few seconds, you’ll get a penalty and the character will feel dizzy, preventing you from clicking on the screen. It’s… also not that big of a hindrance.

By the way, if you want an additional puzzle on top of the whole game (in Evangeline's story, at least), you can look for robotic insects scattered around the game, one per important screen. Three achievements are about finding all of the ones hidden in each chapter. This isn't too difficult.

For the record, the first time I played this game, I did it on Casual. For this review, I replayed it on Expert. I think I had an easier time on Expert, because I had already played through all of the puzzles and nothing else was actually any more difficult!

A quick look at the Steam page for Clockwork Tales shows that it’s currently sold in a bundle with other Artifex Mundi games, each of which seems to follow the same concept: Smart woman solves puzzles, uncovers secrets in some kind of adventure with plenty of excuses to stop the plot in its tracks to get an enigma or thingamajig solved. Which, you know, it’s their niche, if that’s what the creators at Artifex Mundi do best, they can keep on doing it. They’ve had a few more releases.

Nah, it's okay. Every time I see a Nazi wannabe, I want to
punch their lights out too.

I’m also under the impression that these puzzle games are for children, which would make sense since the difficulty level of the game in general isn’t that high and the story does it best to feature no violence whatsoever. The villain is caught without violence, and the only ones who get hurt are robots. I appreciate that! It’s actually a nice change of pace. Kudos to Artifex Mundi as well, to try and feature female protagonists that are always treated with respect.

Granted, it’s got some tricky sections. There are items on some screens that you might not think about checking, which makes it difficult to solve some of the item combination riddles. Thankfully, you can always ask for hints (even on the Expert difficult) and you can skip every solitary puzzle – as if the game wasn’t easy enough already. Yes, the difficulty is set for children and pre-teens.  But hey, that’s okay. This game is perfectly fine for your kids – and in fact, you might enjoy it too.

That's all fine and good, but who's gona pay to repair
the damage done to the Inn?

The environments are quite pretty and detailed, although that comes with the genre. The art in this game is pretty good. My only complaint is how the limited movements of the bodies of characters, coupled with the incessant movements of their CGI heads, causes a bit of an uncanny valley feel to arise – not to mention how, in Doctor Ambrose Ink’s case, his moving head clearly shows the divide in his beard between the part that moves and the rest of the body, which doesn’t. But aside from that, yeah, the game looks pretty good. The music is also quite enjoyable.

Although, I have to say, I noticed a few spellig mistakes here and there whenever someone's spoken lines were written on the screen. I hate to point it out as it's not so bad, but in a puzzle game that prioritizes smarts and intelligence, these spelling mistakes clash with the theme. Was the spellchecker on vacation that day?

So yeah: Good game! Buy it for your kids, or try it yourself. And if they like it, the studio has you covered with more games in the genre. I do suggest you check them out. They’re not very challenging for adults, but you could have fun playing through them at least once.

And that’s another review completed! Now… let’s see… What to review next… Hm…

Ah, sure, why not another game I downloaded during my early days on Steam. And maybe something that’s omnipresent on Steam… See you then!