Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink

The next Artifex Mundi game to fall by the wayside is Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink. You play as Evelyn Glass who is searching for professor Ambrose Ink, a guy who is researching something to do with earthquakes in a bizarre Neo-Nazi snow covered town. It’s a bit different from the previous Mundi games in that you actually find Professor Ink at the beginning of the game... only for him to be kidnapped by the Nazis and you have to find him all over again.

You are not alone on the rescue quest – you are joined by Matthew, a mechanical bird who will help you get items from hard to reach places. He doesn’t have much of a carry capacity though and most of his help results in him knocking stuff off of high shelves for you to then pick up. 

As with previous games, there are hidden picture scenes but this time, there is no alternative game to play instead. You will, however, come across different types of hidden picture scenes where you have to use various items you find within the scene in a sort of puzzle format in order to get one item at the end... I realise I’ve probably made that sound more complicated than it is.

Musically and graphically it works well where the music doesn’t annoy or get in the way. In fact, I can’t really remember the music much which is only a good thing.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 18 Achievements

With the lack of an additional mini-game means that there is no need for an additional playthough of the game unless you miss some of the missable achievements – which I still managed to do but it wasn’t too bad for me luckily. You will get 9 achievements for just playing through the game. 10 if you do so in expert difficulty – which once again doesn’t make the game more difficult, simply drags out how long it will take you to complete without a guide.

You’ve then got the now standard missables for getting to the end without skipping any puzzles and completing a hidden object scene - this time without making any mistakes - however there are some additional bits to Clockwork Tales.

In most scenes, you will be able to find things call Steambugs. These are mechanical bugs that serve no purpose other than to be in the game as a set of collectibles and there are four achievements associates with them. You have to find one of them and then you have to find all of them spread over three locations.

I got lucky here as I missed one in the first location in the game so I only had to replay the first tiny bit rather than all of it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

Overall it does exactly what you would expect an Artifex Mundi title to do by this point – more of the same with some slight differences to add to the mechanics. The collectibles offer a new angle to full completion in terms of achievements. I’ve now started playing these games in the order they were released and this is the second title they put out after Nightmares from the Deep so there may be more titles out there with collectibles.