The Watchmaker

The main menu doesn't offer an Exit button. That's the level of polish you can expect. Despite a strangely long loading time, the starting level is ugly and poorly designed. It also means poor visibility, orientation issues, that sort of things. The 3rd person view uses an unpleasant camera, causing a degree of motion sickness, Options include a FOV slider (yet no resolutions selection,) however it's clamped between 80 and 100. If this slider works, which I'm not sure it does, it's not enough. The platforming is what you'd expect with such a camera and moving platforms: low quality, the opposite of awesome. Save system is subpar, even by checkpoints standards, because I'm lost when respawned. Finally, the gameplay wants me to rush. Apparently we are on a timer. This is usually enough to get a thumb down or two, yet here it's particularly baffling as it defeats the purposes of the advertised time manipulation mechanics. Also, rush into motion sickness ? I'll pass.

[quote][b]Warning: Broken Game![/b] This game has design/implementation defects that will render this unplayable for many gamers. There's no working exit button for the game menu and no options to change the controls beyond console peasant inputs, yet the developer does not incidate use of a console peasant children's toy controller is needed to play this shoddy console port.[/quote] Glancing at the marketing materials for Watchmaker and you could easily be fooled into thinking this is a game you want. A third person steampunk (Steampunk is when goths discover the colour brown) puzzle adventure game where you're aging rapidly and you need to explore and solve puzzles fast... that could work, right? Not this time... this is such a bad, lazy console port that the game doesn't even work and can't be played unless you plug in a console peasant kiddies toy controller... nothing works properly unless you do, but the developer didn't put the mandatory "controller required" warning on the store. They also know about this problem but simply refused to fix it... this 8 year old Xbox port hasn't been patched in 4 years... it's abandoned. But they still want your money! From a technical…

[h3]UPDATE:[/h3] The current "Ultimate" version is still BROKEN and ABANDONED BUT there is a workaround to fix it and be able to actually finish it, if you're curious to try it or you can't refund anymore. You need to download an older version and replace the current one with it. It will involve opening the Steam console and use the respective code from depot id to get it. There are several tutorials on Youtube if you want more details. Despite the fix the game is not really worth the trouble anyway, even on a sale. It is still janky, the writing of the dialogue is kinda weird and the puzzles don't take advantage of the time powers enough.

Level timer, it makes sense in-universe kinda but it's annoying at best in practice.

If you are new to gaming and love puzzlers or have a kid that you are struggling to find PG content for then this will do for you. For me it made me motion sick and refused to stay fullscreen even with console commands bc it resets on death. Even if it didn't, there isn't enough going on here to justify my time.

I liked the steampunk style and the concept of aging and de-aging your character, but I don't think this game is well made. The level layouts are confusing, the controls seem finicky, and enemy behavior is not well-designed. I made it to level 2 and had to give up. I've tried to play this multiple times since I bought it, and I think I get stuck at the same spot every time and don't have to motivation to figure it out or even look up the solution.