It's Time You Tried Tick Tock Isle
Tick it off your list
I've had a troubled relationship with video game clock towers. While I adored the setting of Hifumi Kono's Clock Tower survival horror series of the late 90s and early 2000s, the Mad King's Clock Tower jumping puzzle in Guild Wars 2, put me off them for life. So many mistimed jumps, so many perilous falls, so many unreasonably narrow floating catwalks that I tell you were IMPOSSIBLE to land on.
Tick Tock Isle [official site] is a wonderfully strange adventure to fix a sodding clock tower on a mysterious island, travelling in time and meeting whimsical townsfolk. It has a demo, and is now the one exception to my anti-time-telling tower rule.
Developer Squiddershins describes Tick Tock Isle as a "very short, very silly adventure" that sees a young horologist (a clock repair guy) named Strike accidentally sent back in time as his attempt to restore the abandoned monolith in the present day goes awry. Thereafter donning the role of a pseudo-social worker, it's on Strike to fix not only the clock itself, but also the island's "dysfunctional family who are responsible for much of the clock's disrepair".
Tick Tock Isle costs $2.99 on Itch, where you'll also find the free demo.
Set your watch to the game's trailer:
