Weirdly, I've found myself playing a lot of point-and-click games lately; however, Clock Tower might just be one of the best yet.

Despite being an old and forgotten game, Clock Tower remains a strong contender for one of the best horror games of all time. All due thanks to its amazing atmosphere and minimal but iconic sound design.

The visuals also remains impressive, providing a detailed sprite work that looks artistically better than most modern 2D games today. The implementation of RNG also ensures that no playthrough is ever the same. And while the Argento inspiration is quite blatant, it all works to satisfy my itch for a single player slasher game. In fact, I think this is just one of the first and few singler player slasher game on the market, which makes the game all the more unique.

Although some aspect haven't aged as well as some parts of the game. The hallway map all look the same, making it very easy to get lost in. The RNG can also be a bit way too random, causing me to restart the entire game on my first run because it probably didn't expect me to use an optional item that early on in the story.

Sure, it may be the least scariest game on the list, but it surely is one of the most unique out there.

Just to preface I actually played this one on a browser-based emulator. Not something I would normally do but given that the game is nigh impossible to find legit and isn’t exactly a hardware intensive one, I figured why not. It doesn’t affect the game at all, besides simplifying the save and data reload system. Anyway, just wanted that said for the sake of transparency.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with point-and-clicks. Not necessarily of the genre itself but of how it’s frequently executed. Some are silky smooth in their transition from story-progressing logic to clicking while others are forgetful that they’re supposed to be fun and deductive. Good ones don’t overload you with a thousand items to click on, all of which equally unimportant and uninteresting. They slowly envelope you into the world, in spirit and in gameplay. They reward paying attention to little things without simultaneously having you memorize the layout of every single room you enter. The setting is deep in lore but not suffocating in depth, divided by distinct landmarks, instead of a labyrinthian design pattern fit for any circle of hell. On every point but that last one, Clock Tower easily hurdles. The game makes the manor just a lick too long, horizontally speaking, and some of the wall colors repeat, making finding easy markers of progress a bit of a hassle to remember. A minor setback all things considered.

With a character undeniably based on Jennifer Connelly and a manor design not out of place in a vibrantly colored horror-thriller like Suspiria, the game wears its inspirations on its sleeve. An inspiration that I am so here for. You play as Jessica Simpson, an orphan suspiciously getting adopted with some fellow girls by a wealthy benefactor who is not immediately revealed to you. After being taken to a manor to meet your new foster parents, things go awry when the game swiftly remembers this is a slasher love letter and not a hallmark movie, leaving you after the slasherific intro sequence to explore the manor with a juicy amount of freedom and defeat the mysterious scissor-wielding killer, who’s decided you’re just not meant for this world.

Of course, being an unarmed teenage girl means that will be easier said than done. You have what’s referred to in external discussions - since the game doesn’t point this out - as a “Panic” mode, which for this game is tied to health directly. What this means is that when you get caught, the color behind your character portrait on screen will affect how successful you are in throwing off the killer. In order to lower your panic after having reached the lowest mode, “demented” mode, you can stay AFK for a few seconds and you’ll automatically sit down, slowly healing back to full calm, or “fine” mode. This isn’t a bad system, my only wish is some prerequisite explanation, at least for how to lower it, her facial expression in the portrait does well enough to explain how she’s getting worse. Seeing as you don’t want to fight the killer every single room you go to, your main form of defense is in hiding and running. Running is self-explanatory, but I’d like to note how tripping is integrated into the chase sections. In addition to being another homage to the horror movie genre, it also provides some balance and urgency given you’re much quicker than the killer by default.

Now I happened to get lucky and only saw the Scissorman a handful of times. Still let me say, those first few times were quite the learning experience, for finding spots and for breaking out of the killer’s hold. From my fingers to your eyes, be sure you hide extremely well, because I found the breakout mechanic to be a bit clunky, leaving me dead and vivisected more than I should have been. Nevertheless, the cat and mouse chase style were fun but punishing in that classic send you back to menu style. Trying to find a place to hide can be a fun minigame, certainly more than trying to break out of his hold. He’s a smart fellow, so be sure to not run when he’s close if you’re trying to hide. When in doubt, running is your safest bet when he’s far-ish, hiding for when he’s close.

Point and click horrors are usually a bit cheesy/hard to make scary (though I still have a soft spot for them), so take it as gospel when I say this game is about as tense as it can get within the bounds of the genre. A fact bolstered by the tubular sound Clock Tower has. Be it the weird little police siren-like tune when you find something gruesome, the electronic melody that undercuts every contemplative moment that’s somehow soothing AND unnerving, or the sections where the only sound you hear are the echoing knocks of your steps on the wooden floors of the manor, this game just gets it. It’s such a phenomenal benchmark for sound in horror gaming.

Clock (tower)ing in at 3-4 hours, it really is the perfect pace for what it’s going for. With how much it gets right, I can see how and why it has influenced later titles so much too. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the remake that was announced last year with keen interest and a critical lens.

Don't cry, Jennifer
You've been alone before
Since father never came back home
And mother through the gates had roamed
No more to grace your door,
You've been alone before

And so it goes, Jennifer
That friends are wont to leave
So fleeting is our time among
Before the final bell is rung
There's little left to grieve
That friends are wont to leave

Oh do you hear it, Jennifer
Shing, shing, shing
The scraping steel, a primal scream
A terror wrought to mirror sheen
Out from the darkness springs
Shing, shing, shing

Don't cry, Jennifer
It's just a frightful dream

~

Clock Tower doesn't put much stock into originality, wearing its Dario Argento inspirations on its sleeve. It's not an especially progressive title gameplay-wise either, utilizing a somewhat clunky point-and-click interface and harboring much of the obtuse item-focused puzzle solving associated with the adventure genre. What it brings to the table instead is a moody and atmospheric setting with excellent artistic direction. This, and a heavy focus on driving home exactly what it would be like for a young girl to be trapped in a mansion full of unspeakable horrors. Jennifer is largely helpless, and when the eerie silence of the Barrows mansion's halls is replaced with "Don't Cry, Jennifer", you had best start running. Your relatively limited means of survival and the unpredictability of your foe can lend themselves to panic just as readily as they can to frustration. However, while your first playthrough might feel a bit like fumbling in the dark looking for answers, the game's short runtime means there's incentive to make notes and pick over each room for things you may have missed. Over time, you will become a bit more canny and learn all the tricks available to Jennifer, allowing you to power through and perhaps even find a way to lessen the tragedies incurred upon her and her fellow orphans. By the time you're done, you can pull back the curtains on the mansion's mysteries and look the source of the terror in its face. While I feel its narrative begged to be expanded upon just a bit more, Clock Tower avoids over-complicating what it is at its core: A compact but impactful horror experience that is a sadly overlooked gem of its era, and one that belongs in the catalog of anybody who loves the genre.

You can find translations for the original SFC title here.

Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8

I played maybe five minutes into Clock Tower when the translation first came out, and I really didn’t get it. As such, I wrote a horrible review here. But now that I’ve played it again, I realize I really didn’t give it a fair shake the first time around. So let me try again.

It all starts off when Jennifer Simpson is taken from her orphanage along with some other girls to live in this huge, spooky mansion. All the other girls suddenly disappear, and you’re left there alone. And, now you have to go through the mansion and find out what’s going on. I should note that Clock Tower is fucking scary. Anyone who thinks that the Super NES is not able to produce a truly frightening atmosphere should check this out and be proven wrong. Saying any more about it would probably ruin things a bit.

Clock Tower is an adventure game, like, uhh, Maniac Mansion or such. You move a pointer around and tell Jennifer where to walk to, and you can click on things and she’ll look at them or pick them up or whatever. One thing I don’t like about the game is the fact that Jennifer walks so sloooowly. Maybe it’s to heighten the effect or whatever, but I keep wanting to reach over for my Speedup key. You can make her run, but running depletes her health by quite a bit. Not like it matters for most of the game, but you will want that health when it counts. SLOW! You shouldn’t be penalized for running. Anyways.

Oh! I almost forgot… Multiple endings! I love multiple endings, and not that Star Ocean 2 “eighty slightly different variations on one ending” crap, we’re talking nine separate endings, depending on how you do things, where you go, who you talk to, and stuff. A super nice touch, that really ups the replay value here.

(editor's note: there's a patch which gets the stuff from the Playstation game into the SNES game, adds mouse support, and a ton of other stuff: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5397/)

Dalle vibes di un Dario Argento ancora in forma, Clock Tower si presenta come un dolce tuffo nel passato per gli amanti del genere horror, sia videoludico che filmico.

Insieme a Alone in the Dark e Sweet Home, Clock Tower è considerato uno dei primi Survival Horror della storia, in particolare per quanto riguarda quel filone in cui il protagonista non possiede doti offensive e non può far altro che fuggire dinanzi ai pericoli, in questo caso rappresentati principalmente da Bobby, un omuncolo che ci inseguirà con un paio di enormi cesoie.
Quello che potrebbe all'apparenza sembrare il classico teenage slasher, dunque un'opera dalla narrazione superficiale e secondaria, si rivelerà presto essere un titolo molto più profondo, dalla trama che si svela piano piano e in maniera silenziosa. Certo, esistono dialoghi e i pensieri della protagonista talvolta didascalici, ma non spesso saranno chiari circa gli eventi che andremo a vivere in questa disavventura: toccherà al giocatore mettere insieme tutti gli "indizi" ottenuti dall'esplorazione e dall'esaminazione di alcuni elementi dello scenario per ottenere un quadro più completo della situazione, similmente a quanto avviene in un più moderno soulslike.
La cosa che mi ha sorpreso maggiormente, pensando al fatto che si tratti di un gioco del 1995, è la quantità di eventi, scoperte e imprevisti che possono randomicamente capitare di partita in partita, come apparizioni improvvise dell'inseguitore, scoperte di cadaveri e attacchi da parte di esseri apparentemente innocui, ognuno con un'animazione unica e soluzioni differenti per poter sopravvivere. Questo non solo dà valore all'esperienza originale, ma aumenta, anche grazie alla presenza di numerosi finali da scovare, in modo intelligente la rigiocabilità di un gioco che, di per sé, è abbastanza breve.
Inoltre, grazie anche ai movimenti abbastanza fluidi e ad un sistema di checkpoint funzionale, Clock Tower riesce ad invecchiare relativamente bene, rendendosi appetibile anche per i giocatori attuali.

L'unica nota veramente negativa, almeno per quanto riguarda la versione SNES, è la questione "punta e clicca": questo genere, su console, non deve esistere, non è pensato per essere giocato senza mouse; nonostante (in questo caso) non sia troppo scomodo, il dover muovere il cursore obbligatoriamente con le freccette direzionali peggiora l'esperienza di gioco, appesantendola più del dovuto.
Altro piccolo problemino riscontrato nel corso del gioco sono le animazioni un pochino lente che interrompono spesso il flusso di gameplay, soprattutto quando si deve interagire con un oggetto in stanza o oltrepassare una porta distante.

Se riuscite a sopportare il fatto di giocare un P&C su console, recuperatevi assolutamente Clock Tower, ne varrà la pena!

Great art, atmosphere, and multiple endings and ways certain events can play out.

Point and click mechanic is a little annoying due to some objects only having one spot that it allows you to interact with them making it easy to miss things unless you know that you can interact with it.

It's fairly basic premise but they nailed the art and atmosphere of the location.

Esperienza interessante, rilevante per dimensione storico-culturale ma un po' una palla al cazzo a giocarlo

Fa parte di una trilogia di titoli tra loro scollegati chiamata "Cinematic Live" (シネマティックライブシリーズ), con l'ambizione di proporre in forma videoludica un'esperienza prossima a quella del cinema. Trae forte ispirazione prima dalla letteratura Lovecraftiana e, in corso d'opera, dalla filmografia di Dario Argento, "Phenomena" in particolare: l'artwork della protagonista è identico a Jennifer Corvino, la colonna sonora riprende lo stile delle OST dei Goblin, etc.

L'esperienza ludica che se ne trae è nuova per l'anno di uscita; fino a quell'anno, nelle varie declinazioni del gioco horror venivano integrati sistemi di combattimento tali da rendere il protagonista capace di usare armi contro i propri aggressori, anche in quei casi in cui si impersonava un individuo relativamente ordinario (e.g.: "Alone in the Dark")

Al contrario, stavolta si è alle prese con una protagonista che si affatica e incespica, che ha bisogno di riposarsi per ripristinare la propria energia fisica, che si inpanica e che non è in grado di ferire i propri aggressori (ok non proprio ma spoiler): si può dire il capostipite di una certa quantità di horror psicologici, dai Silent Hill ad Amnesia

Il level design è abbastanza complesso, la magione è enorme e include numerose stanze con all'interno una certa quantità di oggetti con cui interagire. Tra le cose particolarmente interessanti ci sono un parametro di panico, rappresentato dal proprio avatar su uno sfondo colorato (il colore cambia in base al panico, ergo alla quantità di eventi spaventosi di cui la protagonista è spettatrice), e il fatto che si tratti di un gioco particolarmente aperto: è possibile recarsi in certe parti dell'abitazione prima di altre, a propria discrezione; questa libertà di scelta si riflette anche sulla tipologia di sequenze attivate (es.: andando prima nel bagno, si troverà il cadavere della propria amica; proseguendo senza entrarvi, invece, si vede l'assassino fiondarsi dall'alto buttando di sotto anche una delle vittime). A questo segue anche la possibilità di accedere a otto possibili finali, in base anche alla quantità di cose scoperte durante l'esplorazione

Edit: riconsiderazione fondamentale. Prima ho parlato di un parametro di panico, basandomi su alcuni articoli e sul fatto che il colore dietro l'avatar viene effettivamente alterato da eventi spaventosi (e.g.: la protagonista vede un dipinto che inizia a sanguinare).
Invece, leggendo anche il manuale del gioco originale, si parla più precisamente di forza fisica (体力), o stamina

Inizialmente avevo formulato una lamentela riferita ai movimenti parecchio lenti della protagonista, trovando quindi scorretto l'aumentare il livello di panico a causa della corsa. Prendo atto del mio errore, che però trova anche riscontro effettivo in un utilizzo ambiguo dell'HUD. Vero è che il colore dietro l'avatar indica ufficialmente la stamina; tuttavia, in presenza di un pericolo mortale (e.g.: un confronto con il killer), lo sfondo lampeggia in modo insistente. In questo caso, si entra in quella che viene definita "panic mode": il giocatore deve fare button mash per aumentare le proprie probabilità di successo nella fuga. Oggi siamo abituati a interpretare il button mash in un'ottica negativa, anche a causa del fatto che spesso e volentieri appare in concomitanza un prompt visivo; la sua inclusione in "Clock Tower", invece, funziona sempre in virtù del fatto che gli sviluppatori vollero fare in modo di mantenere costantemente un certo grado di tensione. Quella che potremmo definire una sorta di cut-scene non deve essere un momento di rilassamento da parte del giocatore, che si limita a essere spettatore: al contrario, deve rimanere coinvolto e sempre pronto a confrontare gli elementi di pericolo. Queste idee vennero poi riprese da altri sviluppatori (es.: il Team Silent per "Silent Hill")

In un modo sintetico, si sfrutta l'HUD per integrare due sistemi diversi e che dipendono l'un l'altro. La mia confusione deriva proprio dal fatto che non sono stato in grado di intuirlo, mentre sul manuale viene spiegato in modo esaustivo

La lentezza, per quanto io l'abbia trovata spesso tediosa ed eccessiva, ha comunque un proprio senso nella dimensione delle idee di game design, level design e sound design (tutto design): l'essere obbligati a spostarsi lentamente tra corridoi tetri ha sicuramente una buona giustificazione, amplificando sensazioni di inquietudine attraverso suoni diegetici (es.: a un certo punto c'è il suono di un telefono che squilla) e potendo sapere solo all'ultimo momento quand'è che l'assassino è nelle nostre vicinanze (lo segnala lo sferragliare delle forbici che impugna)

about as basic as a survival horror can be, in setup and execution, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Sure, at times you're gonna be running around like a dumbass trying to find the one thing you missed to progress, but that's to be expected of a point-and-click horror game of this age. I don't know how bizarre this may sound, but to me, this is kind of like the original Zelda, in the sense that it's a ground-breaking title that can be a tad hard to go back to if you're used to modern equivalents, but if you've got an afternoon to
kill, a guide at the ready, and a desire to check out a landmark game, they're a great time

(This is the 112th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

Funny how I played this right after Chrono Trigger and both games include clocks as part of their main menu. Couldn't be more different in tone and gameplay though.

Clock Tower is one of the first ever survival horror games, mixed with point & click adventure gameplay, and was released on September 14, 1995 for the SNES. Developed by Human Entertainment, it would go on to be ported over to PC, PlayStation and the WonderSwan (yes, really) but it never got released outside of Japan. That changes next year (2024) when a remaster makes the game available for Western audiences finally. If you want to play the original, you have to get a fan translation patch until then.

Clock Tower is heavily inspired by the 1985 film Phenomena, so much so that the main character is designed to look like that film's main character and shares the same name, Jennifer. I believe Clock Tower might just be the earliest rendition of a horror game with "run away" instead of "confrontational gameplay". You got Alone in the Dark as possibly the first ever Western survival horror game, but you got combat there. Sweet Home might be the first real overall survival horror game, but you got combat there too. So it makes sense that the game's director has been told that run away horror would not be fun when he tried to make this game, but Alien Isolation, Outlast, Amnesia etc. have proved them wrong over the years I'd say, including Clock Tower itself.

STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10

Jennifer is an orphan. She, alongside three other orphans, are adopted by a Simon Barrows and taken to his secluded mansion by a woman named Mary. The mansion is named "Clock Tower" because ... it has a clock tower. Mary goes to find Mr. Barrows when they arrive, you wait around for a minute, the girls get impatient and you start looking for her. As you enter the adjacent room, screams come from the room you just left, so you go back to see all the girls disappeared.

Now you go look for them and try to escape. There is some storytelling from here on, but it is limited to only key plot points. Where are the girls, who is responsible, what's the secret and how is the story resolved?

The cool thing is that things are semi-dynamic, in that events play out differently depending on which areas of the mansion you go to first. Your first encounter with the main antagonist for example can play out 3 different ways depending on whether you go to the courtyard, walk into the foyer or enter a bathroom. They're all pretty memorable scenes as well. Even the faith of the other girls is left to your path, as they can live or die depending on what you do, without knowing that you did it. This doesn't help flesh out any characters or make the story more compelling, but it's a really nice touch.

Figuring out the secret and getting the best out of 9 possible endings is not the very satisfying resolution you might think it is, but the variety of outcomes shows the passion involved in making this and helps your journey to be a little bit more unique than the majority of "static" horror experiences.

GAMEPLAY | 10/20

This game has elements of survival horror and point & click adventure. You move Jennifer around on a 2D plane by either using the directional pad to walk, the L and R buttons to run (on SNES) and the Y button to interact with objects. Walking is painfully, and I mean painfully, slow. Running is quick, but the game discourages it by having Jennifer's health gradually deteriorate as you run. This is indicated by the background color of her avatar in the bottom left corner, which changes from green all the way to orange. To be honest, there isn't really a notable difference between walking around with a green or orange background - not that I noticed anyway - so I'd say just run, because whatever good atmosphere the game sets, it's offset by the sleep-inducingly slow walking speed they gave Jennifer.

Progressing in this game is done by walking into one of the dozens of doors, finding key items and then finding a location to use these items on, which then unlocks more doors to enter. It's standard stuff, even for 1995, with the key difference being that there is a man with big ass scissors roaming about trying to kill you.

Interestingly, encounters with him are not randomly occuring after some time passes, but rather scripted events. I'm not going to go into the details of when and how you meet him, but the scenes range from surprising to funny in a good way and I'm sure those will be what I remember the longest out of my Clock Tower experience. To get away, I found that I had to either find a specific spot to trigger something or I'd have to wait for many minutes to pass while I run around. Because while he is chasing you, you can't interact with stuff, so you basically have to do one of the two. The way you evade him through triggers is pretty clever. One example is a bedroom, which has a parrot in it. If you hide unter the bed, the parrot will actually rat you out and you will die. If you however let the parrot out of its cage and trip it in one of the beds, you can come back here later and successfully hide under the bed. It's pretty cool how they pull it off.

Regarding death: It will find you in your first playthrough, but is more or less easily avoided in subsequent playthroughs. This makes encounters with Scissorman not so scary, but should you die, don't fret, as auto saves happen all the time. With the game's run time of 30 to 120 minutes, you basically can't not beat the game UNLESS:

You miss out on one key item. This might force you to go through the entire house again to find something hidden away in a difficult-to-see interactable spot. To prevent this, make sure you check every inch of every room for something interactable. If you do that, you'll be fine.

Overall, it's really not bad for its time, but the walking speed really did kill a lot of the enjoyment for me, and the layout of the mansion is so confusing that you'll be walking around the same halls and not find that one door you need to go into because they all look the same. In the end, I got 3 different endings on 3 playthroughs, and I did have fun with it overall because things occuring differently from playthrough to playthrough (unless you take the same path) was a nice surprise.

MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10

No voice acting apart from the screams you'll hear throughout the game. There is also a low number of tracks used for the game's soundtrack, which makes sense when you understand that the game purposely sets the atmosphere of its game by having you listen to Jennifer's footsteps for like 90% of your playthrough. As mentioned before, the slow walking speed made me tired of the footsteps than kept on edge by them, but your experience may differ based on your patience. The soundtrack mainly consists of one theme that is remixed in subtle ways and played regularly throughout your playthrough. It is unnerving and works well though.

GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10

The game features multiple gory scenes, which are pretty detailed and disturbing. There are plenty of those as well and you'll see them at regular intervals. The main visuals of the game are rather average looking however and you spend most of the game walking through halls that look the same. Most rooms are also simple-looking as they are adorned with pictures of random people and filled with regular furniture. The rooms that do stand out usually do so because of the one surprise hidden in there, but outside of that, the visuals you get for 90% of the game are nothing special.

ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10

If I played this in my younger days, I'd crap my pants. If you're in your late teens or 20s like me, you might still feel that way if you're particularly easy to scare. I'm on the other extreme of the spectrum in that I haven't had a horror game/movie scare me in well over 10 years. I'm not proud of it but rather saddened by that burden, however I mention it because me giving my thoughts on a game's atmosphere comes from that frame of mind. The game is considered to have a tremendous atmosphere, one that has you on edge throughout and positively disturbed. I can definitely attest to that in the game's key moments, and it's certainly among the scariest games the SNES has to offer.

That said, the walking speed and long silences really kill a lot of the atmosphere the game builds for me. It's a concious design choice I'm sure, but it hasn't aged well. It's worsened by the fact that these silences are obviously supposed to make enemy encounters more meaningful as the anticipation for them build up, but Scissorman is such a weak enemy once you figure him out that he's a nuisance more than a threat. Heck, Jennifer can simply grab his scissors and throw him to the ground like he's a toddler.

That combination makes me reserved about calling this game scary or very atmospheric for most parts, but I'm sure some of that comes from my relationship with horror media than from the game, though I can't say the game is not at fault for it a big amount too.

CONTENT | 8/10

For a game that can be finished in 15 minutes if Jennifer could actually run up stairs fast and open doors quicker, there is a lot more content here than meets the eye. There are 9 different endings, dozens of doors that include puzzles / jumpscares / grotesque scenes / key items to collect, enemy encounters to run away from and 3 friends to find, which can occur in a variety of ways. You can easily get 5-10 hours worth of the game, if you want to see all endings. For a SNES survival horror game, I appreciate that the game doesn't overstay its welcome.

LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10

The mansion is a lot more confusing than it should be. You got halls in the first and second floor and you enter them to find the way to the final area, where you will reach the finale. Simple enough. But was I already in this room? Or that room? Where even am I? Where have I not been yet? Some different looking doors and maybe some objects to remember areas by would have been nice.

That said, the fact that you can get different scenarios based on routes you take is a nice touch and works well, even though it might not make sense if you think about it too much. There is a scream you hear in one corridor for example. If you look out the window, that friend dies. If you don't look, the friend stays alive. But overall, this variety adds a lot more to the game than it detracts from it.

CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10

This might not be the best (run away) survival horror game ever made, but it was unique for its time and did things people didn't deem enjoyable before the game came out. Then Clock Tower released and not only was praised, but also sold well. We got many games in this sub-genre since, both in 2D and 3D variety. It all started here (as far as run away horror goes), or got its first big star of the sub-genre at least.

REPLAYABILITY | 4/5

Plenty of replayability thanks to the multiple endings and the different scenes you can trigger.

PLAYABILITY | 4/5

Works well at all times. The walking speed is just brutal though.

OVERALL | 61/100

Clock Tower is only the second survival horror game I've played since this challenge started in 1990. It might just be the second survival horror that released since 1990 regardless of whether I played them or not, so I will remember it fondly for that alone. It has the same growing pains many games have though, that are some of the first of a genre. It hasn't aged well in the gameplay department and your enjoyment of it will vary greatly based on your patience for the walking speed and your susceptibility to being scared easily in horror games. It brought the survival horror genre forward at time though, for which I appreciate it.

survival horror, as a genre, still has this new feeling to me. i can't put my finger on it. any time i play a game like clock tower, i end up going "aww, look at how groundbreaking this was!" and i end up having rose-colored glasses with my experience. this isn't a bad thing. if anything, this is probably a very good thing, because it helps me appreciate older, rougher games like this. at the same time, i feel as though any praise of this game that i give has to be given with that context. if you're looking for this as just a game experience rather than something informative, you might be let down.

clock tower's influences are very obvious, even to someone relatively lacking in film breadth. this game is part slasher, part giallo, part monster flick, all mixed into one neat package. the gameplay is fairly simple point-and-click adventure game stuff, but when you add in the stalker element of scissorman, it adds a whole new layer. it's therefore a shame that it's fairly easy to see how the sausage is made with regards to when and how scissorman will encounter you. i can't be too hard considering that this is one of the earliest instances of "horror game stalker" as a gameplay mechanic. but there is such a precipitous drop in scare factor once you do a second or third playthrough and find out "oh scissorman can only appear in like 3 spots and you can fight him back if you run into him".

on the flip side, my first playthrough actually had me pretty anxious and on edge. when you don't know when and where scissorman can show up, it's pretty unnerving. there's barely any music in the game aside from the scare chords and the theme (that apes a lot from carpenter's Halloween theme), so you spend most of the playthrough in your head with ambient silence waiting for something, anything to happen. there's minor scares throughout the game, but you constantly get this feeling of unease. the barrows mansion isn't necessarily the most memorable place on earth, and good god, it needs a map. but it does lend itself to this creepy "you don't belong here and we know it" feeling from the environment. a sort of "the walls have ears and they're deaf to your screams" type vibe.

that's what this game luxuriates in: vibe, aesthetic, feeling. when you get to the tangible, this game is fairly short in that you could easily speedrun it in like 15-20 minutes considering the puzzles barely change from playthrough to playthrough. you can get different scenarios (i.e. what happens if you interact with [character] as early as possible vs. what happens if you interact with [character] after finding out more information), but the plot beats will all be largely the same. it's a simple game with a simple plot and it has a simple goal that it accomplishes simply. i do miss when you could say that about a video game.