Clock Tower (1995)

Preliminary: I always thought of this as a PS1 game and always remembered it heralded as a pre-RE1 survival horror. But I never had access to any of the series, and I clearly must have been thinking of a later one/sequel. Definitely did not expect a point and click for the SNES ha (Ah, this is all because this first one was never released outside of Japan. That explains it)

Being in the lineage of adventure games, it's nice to see the multiple ways to play it, multiple routes to go, multiple endings etc. Tho I'm sure I'll resort to a guide eventually

Compared to the PC and PS1 games etc that were its contemporaries, these beginning screens are... underwhelming. especially coming straight from Rayman. But it's fitting the vibe and has a very sophisticated Feel to it so far. And like Alone in the Dark--it properly loves its footstep and door noises! lol.

Ehhh unfortunately in the era that I'm in, this Look and Play is just not enough. I am excited to start the series, and this si full of great ideas like hiding from Scissor man multiple routes etc., but the actual controls and Look are disappointing. It was fun watching through a playthrough of someone who can tolerate the Play restrictions (which reminded me of early graphic adventures more than the late 95 era I'm in) and nice to see the attention to detail, the intensive Feel, the brutal deaths even with the limited SNES Look (and even quite limited looking for a 95 SNES game..)

Look: 7/10 Disappointed in most ways but gotta give a shoutout to the attention to detail in the horror aspects

Sound: 6.5/10 Horror-y indeed

Play: 6.5/10

Feel: 7.5/10

Attachment: 6.5/10

Overall: 6.8/10

Time stands still. A moment of tension lingers forever. Something is horribly wrong! Of that, you are all but certain. This foreboding feeling rattles your entire being. And yet it is not in some terrible discovery which heralds such perturbation. It is instead through an absence of knowledge, in an inability to rationalize unmet expectations, in which born is dread. These thoughts that shake you are not quantifiable. Observable reality has yet to catch up to the lived reality that trembles your bones. That which torments you does not yet even exist! Only truly coming into being, through being perceived.

You find you cannot exist forever in this petrified state of intangibility, as safe as such ignorance may bring. The air of epistemic uncertainty lies stagnant. Suffocating you in a disconcerting void of unease. And so, for your sanity, and to breathe, you seek it out. To know the nature of the evil that haunts you. You step towards the curtain. You pull back its sheets. And you immediately regret having peered beyond its veil. Because now you must acknowledge the horrible truth before you. A truth that you have only just now, made real.

Perception has formed reality. The infinite and intangible mass of possibilities now taken form. The quantum cat that lies dead before you bears your face. You gasp out in shock, but part of you acknowledges such an act is performative. You already knew of the outcome that your quest for context could bring. You manifested this reality to conform to your expectations. That it is your hands bearing the scissors in which truth is cut.

Your grim thoughts are interrupted by a chime. And your heart resonates to its reverberation with a beat. A moment… The moment has passed! The sound of the bell proclaiming it to be so, forcing you to acknowledge it. Forcing you to know it. Forcing you to revel it! The clock gears spin as the rain subsides. The limp body of a curious cat could even be perceived as smiling, as dawn breaks upon this cursed night.

(Clock Tower is a historically formative game in which many concepts for survival horror have derived. Despite being a derivative work itself, taking clear inspiration from once contemporary horror films, it has carved out a legacy of uniqueness that has persisted to the current day. Much of this is attributed to the dynamic nature of the ‘Cinematic Live’ design philosophy behind it. The game partially adapting and responding to your decisions, playing out differently by chance and that which you choose to observe. This creative approach in which it beseeches its players to seek out a comprehensive understanding of the variance in which its story may play out, results in a fascinatingly novel experience for an otherwise incredibly short game. I recommend it to anyone curious who is at least a little acclimated to point and click adventure games, as it may be frustrating to proceed for the uninitiated. Do make sure you read the manual though, regardless of your experience, as it provides much context. This game would seek to teach you, that without understanding context we cannot hope to advance time.)

Clock Tower, or Clock Tower: Rewind in my case, is a cool, creative and clumsy horror romp. You play as a Jennifer, an orphan who is adopted to a new home only to find that the home is a creepy mansion with a murderous scissors-wielding maniac in it. You must then solve puzzles, run and hide from the Scissorman and reach one of the multiple endings the game has to offer.

While the gameplay consists of slow and sluggish point-and-click gameplay with occasional button-mashing and really confusing navigation, the game is a fun, stylish and creative package, especially for its age. As said, there are many different endings but there's also many different options how things play out during the course of the game. The visuals and soundtrack are also immaculate. In Clock Tower: Rewind, the game includes interviews with the director. There he notes that he really liked Dario Argento's movies. It really shows in the look and sound of the game.

Also, to my surprise, Clock Tower is a very forgiving game to be an old horror game. If you die, you can basically continue right away from where you left. This, the game's short length and the cool vibe make it a nice game breeze through. Just be prepared for some head-scratching puzzles and numerous "Now where the hell was that room?" moments.

I'm not totally sure what to say about this one. I had heard a lot of hype about it, but little of what to actually expect other than that it's a 2D point-and-click horror game very unlike Clock Tower 3, which I had already played and adored. Further, Clock Tower is not just the first game of its series, but is also one of the earliest horror games to leave a lasting legacy on the gaming landscape, at the very least as a cult classic. In fact, this was the third oldest game I played this year out of over 100 games, including a healthy dose of older titles. And yet it's being remastered as I write this, set to release in a few months, almost twenty years later. However, even as a horror gaming fan, I found myself rather disappointed with the game, despite appreciating its innovations and influence.

The game is for the most part very short. A first playthrough is likely to take you about 2-3 hours and successive playthroughs can go much more quickly once you know what you're doing. Much of that time you're bouncing between rooms looking for key items to solve puzzles that grant you further key items to solve other puzzles until you complete the game through one of a variety of routes. There are a few dangerous encounters, most notably with the iconic villain, Scissorman. Many aspects of the game are randomized with rooms and even item placement or puzzle solutions changing quite significantly from playthrough to playthrough. You get lots of items, including a slew you're not really sure what to do with even by the end of the game. There's no real combat with the only action being running to a hiding place or a couple parts where you need to use an item to counter a threat before it kills you. In addition to the randomization, there's also impressively nine different endings you can achieve based on what all you do or don't complete in the game and how you go about a few things. This is definitely a game that, while short, is meant to be replayed at least a couple times.

I had pretty high hopes given the above preface, but while I try to view games through the lens of their time, this one simply didn't land for me. The story is fairly barebones in presentation, leaving much of its more interesting lore and plot to relatively few moments of development. There is some genuinely pretty creepy background lore in the game, but several endings are easily obtainable without uncovering almost any of it. The gameplay I also found a bit too jank with the controls being at times frustrating and unresponsive, a deadly combination during the few moments of genuine danger and a great annoyance at other times. While I think in theory the multiple endings and randomization are a cool touch, especially for such an old game, most of the endings I saw were rather brief or uninteresting and at times the criteria for obtaining them was non-sensical, for instance, for some endings, you have to avoid looking out a certain window when you hear a scream because apparently if you don't look out the window and witness your friend's murder, it doesn't actually happen—an interesting display of solipsism I'm not sure how you're supposed to discover on your own. After getting a couple endings naturally, I did use a guide to get the "best" ending and that playthrough was a lot better, but I don't think I would've had the patience to figure it out without a guide...also we got to the very end of that playthrough and apparently had done something wrong and got a different ending and didn't know until the last like 10 seconds of gameplay that we had failed, which was funny. Glad there's youtube! Ultimately, as much as the game does to make replayability its thing, I didn't really find my replays all that interesting or fresh in an engaging way.

All in all, I don't hate the game or think it's awful. In fact, I think for its time, it's really impressive and likely laid the groundwork for a lot of stronger implementations of its strengths in future games. And there's a lot about it I think was really interesting to see from a retrospective standpoint, not to mention some of its charm still stands up today. I simply didn't enjoy the game that much and while I tried to view the game in the context of its time, I have to think I would have liked it more had I played it as a kid.