Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink

The game works, is very stylish, I love how the machines look, and the puzzles are quite good, after you remember to hover your mouse over everything, even in rooms you thought you were done with. I really wish the game had provided more detail, not in the "how do the machines work" way, but more in the "here's some backstory on this country's wars and how the day-to-day life of the people works", because the amount of stuff I was expected to understand, not question, and just intuit on my own without any narrative reason was surprising. I know this is a steampunk game, so we will, at some point, pilot an airship, but the game and protagonist expect you to just know instinctively that you need to steal one, and don't bother letting you in on this, to the point where I had to use a hint to figure out what the heck I NEEDED all this stuff for. The only other problem I really have is that the character art is really ugly, and when they developers animated it, they chose the creepiest possible way to do it.

Hmm... I could've sworn I played a game similar to this one... It also had the same themes, same mechanical black crawly thingy and that grandpa (maybe...)... But unlike this game... That one was FAR BETTER. This game is not only short and easy... It's... The Agent doesn't do any spy stuff. If it were "this is a lucky human, rescuing her grandpapi..." It probably would've made more sense. More sense, but still wouldn't make the game any better! Was there anything cool? Uh... The bird? I don't know! I think I fell asleep some time after somewhere, woke up on the creepy freaking robot parts (F sci-fi!) and then the game was over. Alrighty then.

A good one. The steampunk worldbuilding is excellent, the puzzles are beyond average, some of them original, all of them fitting the theme very well. Story is good, characters and voice acting again above average. The only niggle I have is with the hidden objects - they are either on the fairly easy side or (the golem parts!) completely undoable without resort to hints or blind clicking about.

Even for a discounted price, it was not worth it, due to being very short and really not very engaging. It followed the usual format for a HOG (walk between scenes, pick stuff up, do a hidden object scene now and again). Nothing about it was particularly fun. The only reason I may play it again in a couple of years is because it has Spanish translation for the text. (I'm playing in Spanish to help me learn it.)

Very Good and Interesting

This is a relatively typical Artifex Mundi HOG, but slightly better than most, I think. Many of the puzzles are a bit on the easy side, so it's a good game for people new to the genre.