Tick Tock Isle is a 2015 short indie Adventure Game by Squiddershins about Time Travel and Dysfunctional Family. Like Squiddershins' earlier game Cat Poke it features nice Chip Tune music and beautiful low-resolution graphics.
The protagonist — Strike Mainspring — is a young "horologist" (a fancy word for a specialist in measuring time or repairing clocks), hired to repair a clock atop a semi-abandoned building on an island. He knows the client, Mr. Klepsydra, only from e-mail. When Strike starts his work, the clock sends him to the year 2009, then to 2010. And to fix it, he ends up needing to solve the problems of people, who inhabited the island back then.
The game is rather short, taking 1-3 hours to solve.
Available from Steam
, Humble Store, Itch.io and the game's own website.
Tropes:
- 20 Minutes in the Future: The game starts in the year 20XX (sic) and ends in the year 2020. It was published in 2015.
- Abandoned Area: The building at the start in 20XX. With cobwebs, a bit of broken furniture, and mice and a stray cat running around.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Everybody. Most noticeable is that Strike's shoulder bag always faces away from the viewer.
- Angry Guard Dog: Blocks paths at various points and growls when approached. Can be bribed away with a squeaky bone. When Strike returns to 2009, the dog manages to block both exits from the top floor. Also, Pen uses it to threaten Strike during the final interrogation.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The interface is very simple: cursor for left, right, jump, use; "Enter" to open the screen with the floor map, descriptions of inventory items and the quest log. When you reach a place, where you can talk/pick/use, a "talk" or "use" icon appears. When your actions trigger changes to the game worlds, a clock icon flashes briefly. However, finding the place that has changed often requires walking through every room in two separate years.
- In addition to that, in 20XX and 2020 many of the doors are locked, making it easier to find the goal.
- You cannot lose the game. At worst, fatal mistakes restart a dialog or a minigame.
- No pixel hunting. The mouse is not used. You select objects and people by moving Strike in one dimension.note The zones where he can interact are sufficiently wide.
- The fastest way to find your way in the prologue is to follow the mouse.
- Bilingual Bonus: If you know Spanish or use a dictionary, solving the luchador's puzzle becomes easier — just tell him the most inspirational of the words he had been called. Though, trial and error works fine too.
- Bland-Name Product: Fauxkia phone. Despite it being called "basic", the icon looks like a Palm OS or Windows CE communicator from around 2000.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: The reception on the island is very poor, Strike hardly hears anything, and understands even less.
- Clock Tower: The Big Labyrinthine Building, that occupies most of the island, is circular, four storeys high, converging toward the top. The clock occupies the top floor.
- Cobweb of Disuse: Everywhere in 20XX, absent in 2009, start appearing in 2010, together with torn curtains. Completely disappear, when you avert the Bad Future.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Not the dog, though. If you visit the dining hall in 2020, put cheese in the mouse hole, leave and return, there will be a note: "Thanks for the cheese. -Klepsydra". Figures, in the Bad Future the mouse is being hunted by stray cats.
- Dumpster Dive: Rivet's trash basket has torn pages from her Secret Diary and an item for her sidequest.
- Dysfunctional Family/Dom Com: A family right out of "domestic comedies".
- Rod, a lazy husband;
- an overworked wife that cooks and cleans for everybody;
- Melody, a snarky musical wiz of a pre-teen daughter;
- Pen, a frighteningly clueful son of about the same age;
- Verge and Foliot, younger twins that force you to play their minigames to get vital items;
- not-quite-right-in-the-head grandmother and grandfather;
- Rivet, a clingy young woman, whose relation to the family is never elaborated;
- Brazo Fuerte, a Masked Luchador, whose relation to the family is never elaborated.
- Fantastic Time Management:Pen: For a time traveller you're rarely on time.Pen: You should make punctuality part of your Ktesibiotic Oath.
- Fetch Quest: The girl needs musical instruments — the more, the better. The grandfather wants syrup. Rod needs lawnmowers (sic, plural). Rivet needs a course in Spanish.
- Fisher King: At least, played with for Rod. While he is busy watching TV and making up excuses, the house slowly falls into disrepair. After his wife and Strike force him to work, the house and the garden remain in best condition, and even the weather improves.
- Funny Background Event: When Rivet is in love with Strike, she has his portrait in her room.
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Genius Bonus: "Ktesibiotic Oath" refers to Ktesibios, Hellenistic inventor, who studied pumps and theory of air elasticity and invented pipe organ and water clock. Contemporaries called him "the father of pneumatics". - Gray Rain of Depression/Cue the Sun: The game starts with rain. 2009, when life was still good, is a sunny summer. 2010, when signs of disrepair started showing, is a bleak winter. Until Rod gets out of his slump and fixes the thermostat. Then 2010 becomes bright summer too. The ending is set under a bright moonlit sky.
- Hyperspace Arsenal: As usual. Lampshaded, when Strike gives Melody an item that looks like a drum in inventory, and it appears as a drum set several times his size:Melody: How were you carrying those?Strike: My extradimensional... I gotta go.
- Impossible Task: The boy makes you guess his name. When you fail, he tells he is Pen. Strike had no clue, but out of his four guesses, three were surprisingly close.
- Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Or rather piles of boxes blocking doors. Several times. In at least one case, the pile is knee-high.
- It's Raining Men: The luchador is introduced falling in front of Spike in 2009. He just greets Spike and jumps back. In 2010 he is in plaster casts after "one too many jumps". In the ending his child does similar stunts.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: As usual for adventure games, but with a twist: near the end Strike can return most if not all of the items he still carries.
- Love at First Sight: Rivet to Strike. Strike isn't interested, and she only hurts herself.
- Match Maker Quest: Rivet lost interest to the luchador and is annoying Strike. Teach her Spanish and boost his confidence.
- Metal Detector Puzzle: Very easy with the game's simplified interface. When it detects something, there's a sound and a pick/use icon appears. Partially overlaps with Beach Combing. The real puzzle is getting the detected object from under the grass or snow.
- Masked Luchador: Brazo Fuerte ("strong arm"). One of the house inhabitants. Stops wearing the mask when he falls in love and quits wrestling.
- Mini-Game: There are four platformer minigames where you become an "adventurer" with a big sword, and fight your way through a level to get an item to advance the plot.
- No Name Given: The grandparents and the mother. Inverted for Rivet, Brazo and the twins Verge and Foliot, who introduce themselves immediately, possibly, because they love theatrics.
- Old Soldier: Both grandparents, a comedic version. They seem to be senile, don't seem to remember the war had ended and wear generals' uniform. Grandmother keeps mistaking Strike for draft dodger and knocking him out, while grandfather keeps promoting him for petty services.
- Point of No Return: The twins warn you that their fourth minigame is this. After that Pen with the dog confronts Strike, Strike discovers how to set the year in the time machine and you see the finale.
- Puzzle Boss: The robot at the end of the 4th minigame. Instead of attacking it, climb it, break the ceiling and overload it with Mooks.
- Retraux: Graphic Adventure Game with Chip Tune music and 320x200 graphics.
- Rockers Smash Guitars: Somewhere between 2009 and 2010 the luchador got himself a guitar, then later wrote on it "I'm a loser" and broke it. When you fix his life, the guitar is intact.
- Running Gag: People keep calling Strike someone he is not:
- Grandfather: "ensign", eventually promoted to "admiral".
- Grandmother: "draft dodger".
- Daughter: "musical detective".
- Twins: "adventurer".
- Luchador: "referi".
- Wife: "handyman"; also keeps forgetting Strike wants to fix the clock rather than her husband.
- San Dimas Time: There's no time limit, but the two time streams of 2009 and 2010 seem to go in parallel — when Strike spends time in one, time passes in the other one too.
- Save-Game Limits: There's only one save game file, saved when you quit. You cannot save the game when you explore the house in 20XX, which feels frustrating.
- Secret Diary: Rivet's diary has several clues.
- Shout-Out: A lot.
- The calico cat from Cat Poke sits near the clock in 20XX. Or maybe the authour reused the sprites.
- To subtly find out, what year did he end up in, Strike asks "how long has The Simpsons been on the air?"
- Strike keeps finishing his conversations with "I gotta go" which may or may not deliberately resemble "I should go" Catchphrase.
- The house rooms are decorated with portraits of various famous characters, including Bill and Ted (next to a Wyld Stallyns poster), Inuyasha and Kagome, Phil Connors and the groundhog, The Lost Vikings, Mr.Peabody and Sherman, possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris and several other action actors. There's also a moose head like in Sierra Quests.
- Another picture is Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory. The one with floppy clocks.
- Out of the four platformer minigames, 1st and especially 3rd are made to resemble Prince of Persia, and 2nd is modelled after Ice Climber. Music too!
- To go up in those minigames, Strike breaks the platforms above with his head.
- Pen imitates Sherlock Holmes.
- When Strike is stuck near the end, a mouse opens a door behind him. He needs some extra help to escape, though. Again, from the mouse, as he learns later.
- The clock has a flux capacitor.
- Speaking Simlish: The game is text-only, but each character keeps saying a single incomprehensible phrase, a lot like in Gobliiins series, for example. Strike's phrase sounds like "Whatever."
- String Theory: The boy has one with Strike's portrait and some pictures and texts in his room in 2010.
- Subliminal Seduction: Similar technique is used for a good cause.Subliminal Spanish Language Lessons: Learn Spanish while you sleep!
- Talk to Everyone: Acknowledged, defied, then played straight.Strike: (to himself) Remember your training at Sadie Lou. Find out when you are and try to avoid talking to people.
- Time Travel: Strike is Trapped in the Past and only does what he has to fix the clock. But his actions Set Right What Once Went Wrong. He travels a lot between 2009 and 2010, and San Dimas Time seems to apply.
- The Unreveal: While it's possible to learn who Mr. Klepsydra is and why did he hire Strike to fix the clock, it's never revealed who built the time machine in the first place.
- Unusual Euphemism:Melody: What the flute do you want?
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Did Mr. Klepsydra actually pay Strike? Pun not intended.
