clockwork is a game with an interesting history, being a lost to time cancelled arcade game by westone of wonderboy fame and being by that series creator, a cult classic that could never be due to circumstances of negative playtests and the changing industry that was moving away from short arcady platformers like it and it got cancelled, for a while anyway, before ININ games brought it back and finished the whole thing, giving it a snazzy physical release and a big limited edition years down the line in 2021 (even has a world record for the longest development cycle, for whatever that means). it's the kind of story you love to see, lost media that deserved to be found being found and finished, we need more of those and less cancellations and shut-downs like we keep having recently. the question is, was the game worth the wait? of course it was! this game is amazing.

it's a platformer but not one in the vein of those wonder boy games, there's no RPG elements, it's a lot closer to the likes of a rygar or trojan, combat heavy with melee attacks and the platforming taking a backseat to that, though the gimmick here is that you have stuns at your disposal and it does change the game up a lot. your first attack will always leave an enemy stunned (complete with a cute sprite change for every enemy!) and leave them open to being grabbed and thrown as a projectile similar to the likes of bubble bobble, it's fun to do and you can even do it with enemies much larger than you, the games boss fights heavily rely on this and they're honestly the most fun part of the game, with the exception of the much too difficult final boss which feels too confusing and random to be fun. that's kind of it for the game, you have an autoscroller segment set on a boat, the boss fights and 3 playable characters that all play mostly the same with the main difference being hitboxes, it's very basic but it works for the game, it doesn't get stale because it's very short and on the easier side so you never get very frustrated or bored.

the game is also realy pretty, big sprites and tons of detail, varied levels like the boat, cloud covered rainbows, factories and a really pretty level on the ocean floor, it's got a really nice vibe to it, it reminds me of a golden age taito game almost, with all the rainbows and cute enemies and i love how it looks so much, it sounds just as nice too. the music in the game (which is by shinichi sakamoto who had worked on games like panic bomber, many wonder boy games, raiden 1 and dungeon explorer) has a very mega drive sound to it which makes me wonder if that's where it started development originally, it sounds like something out of sonic CD or mean bean machine, has that sound to it and it's just nice to listen to and you even get a remixed OST by a ton of different artists available in the games sound test, which is super cool! they're all worth listening to.

there's an elephant in the room here i will have to adress though, the length. to me i don't mind if a game is super short, an amazing game is an amazing game regardless of length and this game is no exception there but i do recognise that not everyone feels the way i do and especially when a game is as short as this it can be difficult to justify the price, especially for the physical release where you would be paying £25 for it. the game is about 30 mins long, 20 mins if you're really good at it, but you do have replayability with the 3 characters and it is a very fun game, to me, it's worth it, but for you it may not be. the game marked westones first real project since some evangelion games for ps2, outside of some ports and revivals of their games like the wonder boy collection or the remake of dragons trap they've been wholley absent from the industry so it's nice to get one last game from them, they were a real powerhouse on the turbographics and megadrive with games like those wonder boy games, dungeon explorer and riot zone, even on other consoles they had a bunch of other cool games like dark half and the super ambitous jaws for NES. while it's not the companies big return like people may have wanted and it's a very short and simple game, it makes for a nice send-off to a long gone studio and i think it's very much worth giving a try sometime.