Clockfall, a roguelike ARPG, has just entered Early Access on Steam. Being developed by the 5-person team at Rever Games, Clockfall has that familiar gameplay loop where you make run after run, each time progressing a little further as you buy buffs, weapons, and spells between runs. Rever Games was kind enough to send over a code, so I booted it up to see if there was anything worth looking at.
Clockfall uses an age-old story. Your village was attacked by the hordes of Destiny, and you weren’t able to save it. You’re now stuck in a loop, where you must relive the attack over and over. Instead of just reliving the memory over and over, you are taking fate into your own hands. Each time you enter the dream, you have a chance to defeat the armies of Destiny. Grow in power, control the flow of time, and repair the clock in the middle of your village and the nightmare will end. It sounds easy, but it isn’t.
In Clockfall, time is your most precious resource. Each run, you are under the gun to gather resources, visit shrines and open chests to gain skill and stat buffs, and reach the dungeon and kill the boss before time runs out. From the second you leave the starting point on a map, time is constantly counting downward. As if a short timer isn’t enough, your time can also be shortened by special enemies that steal seconds from your dungeon clock each time they hit you. Some passages will drain time off your clock just to access them, while others will even lock when your timer reaches a critical point, usually the 3-minute mark.
Fortunately, time flows both ways in Clockfall. Some shrines will allow you to trade gold, health, or Time Amulets (a special item that you randomly find in chests) for additional time. Other shrines will grant temporary buffs to power up your character or define your playstyle, allowing you to defeat enemies and progress through the map faster.
You must find a balance between exploration and progressing through each map. Do you have enough time to clear an area to access a buff shrine, or should you skip it? If you skip it, are you going to be powerful enough to take on more powerful enemies or the boss when you enter the dungeon?
It’s a balance that differs from most ARPGs, and it can be a difficult line to tow at first. When you first start, there’s not enough time to reach the dungeon while the gate is still open. It’s only once you realize that you can’t stop to cautiously defeat every enemy and break every barrel to collect as much gold as possible, that you will have a chance to reach the furthest points of each map. You’ll begin to learn the layout of each map – where the easiest to reach chests are, which fights to run past and when to engage, the pattern of your enemy’s attacks.
Like any roguelike, these failed attempts aren’t done in vain. Temporary buffs gained during the run are lost, but permanent buffs and upgrades will remain. Each run, you’ll collect gold that can be used to unlock the most basic nodes on the skill tree. There are plenty of health nodes, movement increases, and damage increases to help you along the way. And there’s a shiny new bow to purchase that gives you a chance at another fighting style.
Your run ends in one of three ways. First, there is death. Upon taking the final blow, you resurrect at your village, ready to try again. You’ll keep any gold you gathered, but all of the buffs you gained will be lost.
The second way to end a run is by running out of time. Instead of simply returning to your village like you do when you die, running out of time teleports you to The Void. In The Void, you will find two portals. Entering the first portal simply rewinds time and returns you to your village to make another run.
The second portal allows you to “Face Your Nightmare.” To access this portal, you must have collected a Counter-Fate Token from a chest during your most recent run. If so, you can enter the portal and relive the attack upon your village.
In this battle, you will take on wave after wave of enemies that are attacking your Village Clock. The longer you keep the clock ticking, the more Anomalies of Time (AoT) you will collect. When you die or the clock is destroyed, you will return to your village, where you can spend gold and AoT to unlock nodes on a skill tree. These nodes have buffs that will increase health, damage, movement speed, and other stats that will make your character last longer during runs. Other nodes can unlock special chests, increase the number of healing potions you start with, and most importantly, add more time to your dungeon clock.
As you gather gold and AoT, and push your stats and dungeon time up, you will finally reach the third way to complete a map: entering the Boss Dungeon to take on the final boss of the map. Unfortunately, these dungeons are inaccessible at this point of Early Access, severely limiting the amount of content available at this time.
This limited amount of content is currently the most disappointing aspect of Clockfall. Along with the lack of boss battles, there are only a handful of enemy types, you only have three weapons to choose from, and the skill tree is very limited. You are also limited to just two maps, and once you learn the layouts and open enough nodes in the skill tree, they become trivial. Even the survival mode battle to defend your village at the end of each run is currently capped at four minutes.
Just three hours into my time with Clockfall, I have already exhausted everything there is to do. I expect an Early Access game to be incomplete. What is currently available here feels more like a proof of concept Alpha test, or Next Fest demo at best, than it does an Early Access title.
FINAL EARLY ACCESS PREVIEW VERDICT: WAIT AND SEE.
The game runs well, and during the few hours of play, I never encountered a single game-ending bug. There’s a solid foundation being built here, and mechanics like the time-stealing enemies could give Clockfall a unique identity that could help it survive in the crowded ARPG genre. Only time will tell (come on, I had to get some sort of time cliche or pun somewhere) if Clockfall will bloom into a full game. Until then, save your $10 or put it towards a similar title, such as Hell Clock. Just be sure to check back in after a few months and see how Clockfall is doing.
