A giant Clock Tower plunges the world of Tearfeld into eternal night. A kid with a clock-hand sword and a mechanical cuckoo bird has to fix it. Yes, this is a ClockPunk video game, and yes, The Doctor approves of its entire premise. Duskfade, from Spanish indie studio Weird Beluga and published by Fireshine Games, hit PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on August 13th at $29.99. The aesthetic is the real payload here: rusted machinery, ticking motifs, grandfather-clock grappling hooks, and surreal architecture that feels like a fever dream someone had inside a pocketwatch. It already swept three awards at BCN Game Fest (including Best Game and Best Sound), so the bones are undeniably there.

Now, the honest part: the pro reviews are… more complicated. Steam players are sitting at 89% Very Positive, which is respectable. The critics, on the other hand, keep landing on the same note: gorgeous world, competent-to-repetitive combat, levels that don’t fully live up to the art. That tracks. Sometimes a team nails the vibe and the mechanics are just a vehicle to get you through more of it. For ClockPunk fans, Duskfade is essentially a guided tour of a world you want to live in, even if the tour guide occasionally runs you in circles. I’m giving it ΩΩΩ: the aesthetic earns its keep, the execution needs another pass, and I’d still rather be here than in a hundred brown-corridor shooters. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a clockwork cuckoo bird companion comes close.

T. Kingfisher drops Daggerbound on August 25, and if you have not yet met the gnole-and-enchanted-sword corner of her “World of the White Rat,” I have only one question: what have you been doing? This is Book 2 of the Swordheart trilogy, following Swordheart (2018) and picking up with Learned Edmund, a disillusioned scholar who grabs an ancient cursed sword in a desperate moment and gets a very angry, very handsome immortal warrior named the Dervish for his trouble. There is also an enslaved gnole, an opinionated donkey, and what the Library Journal is calling “a queer grumpy/sunshine romantasy.” The Doctor approves of all of these things, separately and together.

The broader setting shares continuity with Kingfisher’s Clocktaur War duology, which is about as close to ClockPunk as romantasy gets without someone putting gears on a corset. The combination of mechanical horrors, found-family road comedy, and characters who would apparently rather face cultists and dragons than admit they have feelings is, frankly, the kind of formula the Omega7Red Formulae itself would produce if you fed it a Pratchett novel and a D&D campaign that went completely sideways. Pick up Swordheart now so you’re ready. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but this series is at least good company while you wait for both.

Via: Goodreads

The Doctor does not play puzzle-adventure games because they are “relaxing.” The Doctor plays them because there is something deeply satisfying about a clockpunk automaton named Oscar following you across half of Europe on a train powered by sheer mechanical stubbornness. Syberia, Benoît Sokal’s masterwork of wind-up melancholy, has been given the full remaster treatment, and the updated version is sitting right there on Steam judging you for every FPS-bro game you bought instead.

If you somehow missed the original: you play as Kate Walker, a Manhattan lawyer who arrives in a tiny Alpine village to finalize a factory acquisition, only to discover the inventor she’s looking for has wandered off on a quixotic mission involving woolly mammoths and a place called Syberia. The world Sokal built is ClockPunk in its bones: brass automatons, hand-wound mechanisms, a whole civilization built on springs and ingenuity instead of steam or diesel. It is gorgeous and a little heartbreaking and it has absolutely zero exploding helicopters, which is the correct amount. Oscar, the automaton companion, remains one of the better written non-human characters in gaming, and I will not be taking questions on this point.

The Omega7Red Formulae declares this one ΩΩΩΩ½. If you have never played it, the remaster is the version to start with. If you have played it, you already know. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a good clockwork train comes close.

Via: Steam

The Clockpunk genre has a problem, and that problem is that most Clockpunk games look like someone put a gear decal on a generic fantasy RPG and called it a day. Duskfade, however, is not that. Indie studio Weird Beluga (yes, that is their actual name, and the Doctor approves) has built a full clockpunk world out of suspended architecture, intricate mechanisms, and painterly landscapes that shift from ethereal forests to underwater ruins to cloud-piercing heights. The whole land has been plunged into eternal night by a mysterious Clock Tower and its enigmatic Master Clockmakers, which is exactly the kind of villain backstory that makes sense when you think about it for two seconds and then makes you furious that you didn’t invent it first.

You play Zirian, a workshop apprentice accompanied by his mechanical bird sidekick Cuckoo, who must shatter the shackles of time (their words, and they earned them) to rescue his sister and restore the world. The traversal looks genuinely fluid: jumps, dashes, grapples, glides, swinging from floating chains, running suspended rails. GameSpot called it “the spiritual successor to Jak and Daxter that we’ve been waiting years for,” which is either massive hype or the truest thing anyone has said about a game in a decade. The demo is live right now on Steam and PS5, so you have zero excuse not to find out which one it is. Launches August 13 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but a clockpunk kid with a mechanical bird and a vendetta against the concept of time might come close. High-5, Weird Beluga. Wishlist it. Play the demo. You’re welcome.

Via: Chalgyr’s Game Room

Somewhere between 2008 and the heat death of the universe, Hungarian director Balazs Hatvani has been building Thelomeris: a city of cogwheels and clocks where the citizens exist solely to feed the insatiable Clock Factory, and no one knows who built it or why. That is, objectively, the most on-brand premise I have encountered since I invented the Omega7Red Formulae. ClockPunk. DieselPunk. Noir. A city that is itself a machine that makes more machine. The Doctor approves so hard he pulled something.

And they got Mark Hamill to play the mysterious Stranger and serve as a script consultant. Luke Skywalker. The Joker. That Mark Hamill, in a brooding Eastern European clockwork dystopia. The Formula was applied by a Hungarian filmmaker with impeccable taste, and the result is either going to be extraordinary or the most beautiful catastrophe ever committed to green screen. Either way I win, because both outcomes are things I want to see. The film has been in development since 2008, which means it has been cooking longer than some of my laboratory assistants have been alive. Nothing can beat old age and betrayal, but apparently this movie is going to try.

A trailer exists. Hamill is credited. The city is dark, cold, and run entirely on clock-powered despair. Someone please get this thing released before the gears stop turning. Via: Screen Anarchy

Just how did they keep time before the invention of gears and springs?  You may be thinking sundials and hourglasses, but you’d be wrong.  Here’s a video on how it was actually done.

This is just plain cool, no matter who you are. I can only imagine the amount of video editing involved. It’s quite an insane project, but it puts a smile on the face.  Of course, the real question is: Who would buy this?  And does it have to be an old man?  Can we have one with Strippers?

Via: GEEK