The Clockwork Man

The Clockwork Man is the first installment in The Clockwork Man franchise and was released on March 18, 2009. The game was published by RealGames.^[3] Set in an alternate timeline featuring a steampunk version of Victorian era London, the player takes on the role of Miranda Calomy, the last in a long line of engineers and inventors with a talent for problem-solving. Accompanied by Sprocket, an automaton Miranda built over the years, and which has developed sentience and personality,^[1] the duo embarks on a worldwide quest to find Miranda's long-lost grandfather, and help him compile the parts to the world's greatest invention.

The Clockwork Man was released as an online game download for PC, Mac and Linux, while a physical release was made available on Avanquest's GSP Click & Play label.^[4] In September 2011, Total Eclipse announced the game would be made available on Steam, along with its sequel, The Hidden World.^[5]

The Clockwork Man: The Hidden World, also known as The Clockwork Man 2, is the second installment in The Clockwork Man franchise, released on July 21, 2010 and published by GameHouse.^[6] It features the return of Miranda Calomy and Sprocket, this time embarking on a quest to find Miranda's parents, discover the titular Hidden World, and stop a group of conspirators from laying waste to it.

The game plays similar to its predecessor, relying heavily on hidden object gameplay and logical puzzles, albeit introducing some new features, such as a journal recording the player's progress and including clues and information useful for completing several stages in the game, as well as a map positioned in the lower right corner, which can be used to quickly travel between available locations.^[7]

The Hidden World was once again released as a downloadable game for PC and Mac by GameHouse, while a physical release was made available as part of Avanquest's GSP casual game catalogue, which bundled the game with the original The Clockwork Man title.^[7] It was later released on Steam by Total Eclipse, along with its predecessor in September 2011.^[5]

A Clockwork Brain was released in 2012 and is the first title in The Clockwork Man franchise to be released for portable devices. A Clockwork Brain features an assortment of one-minute puzzles, designed to test players' perception, logic, pattern recognition skills etc.^[8] With a distinct visual identity blending Victorian-era steampunk aesthetics and Mayan art, A Clockwork Brain's gameplay draws heavy inspiration from games like Big Brain Academy and Who Has The Biggest Brain?.^[8] The game features Sprocket, the automaton character of previous The Clockwork Man games, as the players' guide.

Puzzles in A Clockwork Brain are not tied to any particular story, and have no real sense of progress, meaning not one puzzle has greater priority over the other. Each challenge features 4 mini-games in sequence, each one lasting exactly one minute, and featuring adaptive difficulty to match players' improving skills. Six more mini-games were developed by Total Eclipse and offered as downloadable content through in-app purchases.^[8]

Since its initial release on the App Store on February 15, 2012, A Clockwork Brain eventually became the number one free Educational Game app in the Store. To date, the game has been downloaded over 2.5 million times, and has been highlighted as one of the 500 best apps in the world for 2013 by The Sunday Times.^[9]

The game was eventually released on the Windows Store on December 19, 2015, and on the Google Play Store on December 24, 2015.^[10]

• Total Eclipse Games official website
• A Clockwork Brain official website