Funny how I played this right after Chrono Trigger and both games include clocks as part of their main menu. Couldn't be more different in tone and gameplay though.
Clock Tower is one of the first ever survival horror games, mixed with point & click adventure gameplay, and was released on September 14, 1995 for the SNES. Developed by Human Entertainment, it would go on to be ported over to PC, PlayStation and the WonderSwan (yes, really) but it never got released outside of Japan. That changes next year (2024) when a remaster makes the game available for Western audiences finally. If you want to play the original, you have to get a fan translation patch until then.
Clock Tower is heavily inspired by the 1985 film Phenomena, so much so that the main character is designed to look like that film's main character and shares the same name, Jennifer. I believe Clock Tower might just be the earliest rendition of a horror game with "run away" instead of "confrontational gameplay". You got Alone in the Dark as possibly the first ever Western survival horror game, but you got combat there. Sweet Home might be the first real overall survival horror game, but you got combat there too. So it makes sense that the game's director has been told that run away horror would not be fun when he tried to make this game, but Alien Isolation, Outlast, Amnesia etc. have proved them wrong over the years I'd say, including Clock Tower itself.
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| Title Screen |
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Jennifer is an orphan. She, alongside three other orphans, are adopted by a Simon Barrows and taken to his secluded mansion by a woman named Mary. The mansion is named "Clock Tower" because ... it has a clock tower. Mary goes to find Mr. Barrows when they arrive, you wait around for a minute, the girls get impatient and you start looking for her. As you enter the adjacent room, screams come from the room you just left, so you go back to see all the girls disappeared.
Now you go look for them and try to escape. There is some storytelling from here on, but it is limited to only key plot points. Where are the girls, who is responsible, what's the secret and how is the story resolved?
The cool thing is that things are semi-dynamic, in that events play out differently depending on which areas of the mansion you go to first. Your first encounter with the main antagonist for example can play out 3 different ways depending on whether you go to the courtyard, walk into the foyer or enter a bathroom. They're all pretty memorable scenes as well. Even the faith of the other girls is left to your path, as they can live or die depending on what you do, without knowing that you did it. This doesn't help flesh out any characters or make the story more compelling, but it's a really nice touch.
Figuring out the secret and getting the best out of 9 possible endings is not the very satisfying resolution you might think it is, but the variety of outcomes shows the passion involved in making this and helps your journey to be a little bit more unique than the majority of "static" horror experiences.
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| Jennifer talking to herself |
GAMEPLAY | 10/20
This game has elements of survival horror and point & click adventure. You move Jennifer around on a 2D plane by either using the directional pad to walk, the L and R buttons to run (on SNES) and the Y button to interact with objects. Walking is painfully, and I mean painfully, slow. Running is quick, but the game discourages it by having Jennifer's health gradually deteriorate as you run. This is indicated by the background color of her avatar in the bottom left corner, which changes from green all the way to orange. To be honest, there isn't really a notable difference between walking around with a green or orange background - not that I noticed anyway - so I'd say just run, because whatever good atmosphere the game sets, it's offset by the sleep-inducingly slow walking speed they gave Jennifer.
Progressing in this game is done by walking into one of the dozens of doors, finding key items and then finding a location to use these items on, which then unlocks more doors to enter. It's standard stuff, even for 1995, with the key difference being that there is a man with big ass scissors roaming about trying to kill you.
Interestingly, encounters with him are not randomly occuring after some time passes, but rather scripted events. I'm not going to go into the details of when and how you meet him, but the scenes range from surprising to funny in a good way and I'm sure those will be what I remember the longest out of my Clock Tower experience. To get away, I found that I had to either find a specific spot to trigger something or I'd have to wait for many minutes to pass while I run around. Because while he is chasing you, you can't interact with stuff, so you basically have to do one of the two. The way you evade him through triggers is pretty clever. One example is a bedroom, which has a parrot in it. If you hide unter the bed, the parrot will actually rat you out and you will die. If you however let the parrot out of its cage and trip it in one of the beds, you can come back here later and successfully hide under the bed. It's pretty cool how they pull it off.
Regarding death: It will find you in your first playthrough, but is more or less easily avoided in subsequent playthroughs. This makes encounters with Scissorman not so scary, but should you die, don't fret, as auto saves happen all the time. With the game's run time of 30 to 120 minutes, you basically can't not beat the game UNLESS:
You miss out on one key item. This might force you to go through the entire house again to find something hidden away in a difficult-to-see interactable spot. To prevent this, make sure you check every inch of every room for something interactable. If you do that, you'll be fine.
Overall, it's really not bad for its time, but the walking speed really did kill a lot of the enjoyment for me, and the layout of the mansion is so confusing that you'll be walking around the same halls and not find that one door you need to go into because they all look the same. In the end, I got 3 different endings on 3 playthroughs, and I did have fun with it overall because things occuring differently from playthrough to playthrough (unless you take the same path) was a nice surprise.
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| This just looks cursed |
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
No voice acting apart from the screams you'll hear throughout the game. There is also a low number of tracks used for the game's soundtrack, which makes sense when you understand that the game purposely sets the atmosphere of its game by having you listen to Jennifer's footsteps for like 90% of your playthrough. As mentioned before, the slow walking speed made me tired of the footsteps than kept on edge by them, but your experience may differ based on your patience. The soundtrack mainly consists of one theme that is remixed in subtle ways and played regularly throughout your playthrough. It is unnerving and works well though.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
The game features multiple gory scenes, which are pretty detailed and disturbing. There are plenty of those as well and you'll see them at regular intervals. The main visuals of the game are rather average looking however and you spend most of the game walking through halls that look the same. Most rooms are also simple-looking as they are adorned with pictures of random people and filled with regular furniture. The rooms that do stand out usually do so because of the one surprise hidden in there, but outside of that, the visuals you get for 90% of the game are nothing special.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10
If I played this in my younger days, I'd crap my pants. If you're in your late teens or 20s like me, you might still feel that way if you're particularly easy to scare. I'm on the other extreme of the spectrum in that I haven't had a horror game/movie scare me in well over 10 years. I'm not proud of it but rather saddened by that burden, however I mention it because me giving my thoughts on a game's atmosphere comes from that frame of mind. The game is considered to have a tremendous atmosphere, one that has you on edge throughout and positively disturbed. I can definitely attest to that in the game's key moments, and it's certainly among the scariest games the SNES has to offer.
That said, the walking speed and long silences really kill a lot of the atmosphere the game builds for me. It's a concious design choice I'm sure, but it hasn't aged well. It's worsened by the fact that these silences are obviously supposed to make enemy encounters more meaningful as the anticipation for them build up, but Scissorman is such a weak enemy once you figure him out that he's a nuisance more than a threat. Heck, Jennifer can simply grab his scissors and throw him to the ground like he's a toddler.
That combination makes me reserved about calling this game scary or very atmospheric for most parts, but I'm sure some of that comes from my relationship with horror media than from the game, though I can't say the game is not at fault for it a big amount too.
CONTENT | 8/10
For a game that can be finished in 15 minutes if Jennifer could actually run up stairs fast and open doors quicker, there is a lot more content here than meets the eye. There are 9 different endings, dozens of doors that include puzzles / jumpscares / grotesque scenes / key items to collect, enemy encounters to run away from and 3 friends to find, which can occur in a variety of ways. You can easily get 5-10 hours worth of the game, if you want to see all endings. For a SNES survival horror game, I appreciate that the game doesn't overstay its welcome.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The mansion is a lot more confusing than it should be. You got halls in the first and second floor and you enter them to find the way to the final area, where you will reach the finale. Simple enough. But was I already in this room? Or that room? Where even am I? Where have I not been yet? Some different looking doors and maybe some objects to remember areas by would have been nice.
That said, the fact that you can get different scenarios based on routes you take is a nice touch and works well, even though it might not make sense if you think about it too much. There is a scream you hear in one corridor for example. If you look out the window, that friend dies. If you don't look, the friend stays alive. But overall, this variety adds a lot more to the game than it detracts from it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
This might not be the best (run away) survival horror game ever made, but it was unique for its time and did things people didn't deem enjoyable before the game came out. Then Clock Tower released and not only was praised, but also sold well. We got many games in this sub-genre since, both in 2D and 3D variety. It all started here (as far as run away horror goes), or got its first big star of the sub-genre at least.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
Plenty of replayability thanks to the multiple endings and the different scenes you can trigger.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well at all times. The walking speed is just brutal though.
OVERALL | 61/100 ⭐⭐⭐
Clock Tower is only the second survival horror game I've played since this challenge started in 1990. It might just be the second survival horror that released since 1990 regardless of whether I played them or not, so I will remember it fondly for that alone. It has the same growing pains many games have though, that are some of the first of a genre. It hasn't aged well in the gameplay department and your enjoyment of it will vary greatly based on your patience for the walking speed and your susceptibility to being scared easily in horror games. It brought the survival horror genre forward at time though, for which I appreciate it.
