***SPOOKY SPOILERS COULD BE AHEAD***
Clocktower was developed by Human Entertainment and released on the Super Famicom on September 14th, 1995. The game never saw an official release outside of Japan, but fan translations of the games exist as do English translated reproduction cartridges. The game was pretty popular in Japan and many people agree that it really pioneered the survival horror genre that we know and love (fear?) today. The plot of the game is as follows. You play as a young girl named Jennifer. You along with a couple of your friends have been adopted by a Mr. Barrows and have just arrived in your new home. Mary, whom brought you into the mansion leaves to find Mr. Barrows, and when she doesn't come back, Jennifer goes to look for her. As she begins to look, a loud scream can be heard. Jennifer returns to the main foyer to discover her friends are gone. She then begins to explore the mansion for her friends all while uncovering more about the Barrow's family and Mary. From there the plot will branch off depending on what choices you make in the game leading to one of several endings.
Graphically, Clock Tower does plenty to land right in the horror genre. You wont be finding any bright colors or cartoonish effects here. Dark colors, and plenty of creepy visual effects help to embody the horror feeling. As you play the game you will find objects and trigger events that will cause a very detailed image to come up. These images are actually quite terrifying and actually showed what the SNES was capable of doing in trying to portray horror.
As I mentioned before, the game graphics wise is quite dark and that is certainly fitting for the genre. There isn't much in the way of crazy effects outside of a few brief cut-scenes, but the effects like lightning, mist, and poor lighting all go a long way in making this game feel really creepy despite being on a 16-bit console.
In the sound department, Clock Tower is just plain creepy. For a good part of the game the only noise you will hear is your own footsteps. Having no music at times for some reason makes the game that much creepier. When there is music though it is usually there for a reason, and the reason is usually danger. Events that cause Jennifer to panic have music, when the main antagonist appears there's music, and while you are being chased there is music. As you sneak around the mansion, there is just the sound of your footsteps. Some people call that lazy, I think it's brilliant and all very spooky.
Where Clock Tower is really interesting though is in the gameplay. The game is actually a point and click adventure. You determine where Jennifer goes, but you really do not have total control over her at all. The game starts off kind of slow as you try to get used to the point and click system which at the time was largely a thing on PC as opposed to consoles. As an exploration game, you will want to click on anything you can actually click on. You can discover items that will help along the way or progress the story. Be vigilant! Once you run into the main antagonist though, the game really begins. In the beginning, he is only known as Scissorman. As you play through the game you will find out more about him. Scissorman can pop up seemingly anywhere. Sometimes there is a small cut-scene signaling his arrival, other times he just appears. At any time, Jennifer's emotions can change making it easier for her to make a mistake and be killed.
The more Jennifer runs or the more scary things happen to her, such as Scissorman coming out of a bathtub, the darker the color around her portrait will become. Eventually it will become a dark red, when it reaches this color death is pretty certain. At times a panic event will happen where her portrait will flash. If you mash B enough you can survive whatever has triggered the event (most of the time it's when she catches Scissorman's scissors as he goes for a kill. The only way for you to get Jennifer to relax is to hold the X button. Eventually she will kneel down and slowly calm down. It takes a while for her to recover so you want to try and keep her near her calmest state until you meet with Scissorman again.
Despite being an overall awesome experience gameplay wise, the game does have a few flaws. One of these flaws is that Jennifer does take a real long time to fully recover from a frightening event. It's cool that it takes a long time while a frightful event is going on. For example, I agree that it should take a while to recover while Scissorman is chasing you. However when nothing is going on and you get more emotional from running, I feel like it shouldn't take equally as long. It's a minor thing, but I think it would have helped to speed up the game a little bit. Some people say that Jennifer moves too slow in general. I don't really agree with this as the slow movement I think only adds to the suspense of the game and the feeling that something could happen at anytime. My only other complaint is that I ran into several times where Jennifer would just not respond all that well. I would press the R button to run right and she'd just stand there and enter a panic situation with the Scissorman. Probably paralyzed with fear I guess? My controller works just fine so it's not that. There are a couple other minor things like backtracking a lot and getting lost easily that are really a part of most point and click adventures, but none of them really affect the game all that much. After all, getting lost in scary mansion only adds to the experience right?
After finally playing Clock Tower I can give it a very good 8.5 out of 10 rating. I agree with anyone who says this game helped to pioneer the survival horror genre. The craziest thing about all of this to me is that it was done on the Super Famicom (SNES) and not on PC or a later console. The graphics, sounds, and gameplay all lend their hand to making this a truly suspenseful and frightening experience. Really the only flaws this game has is that it is slow in the beginning and Jennifer's recovery, and for whatever reason an occasional control failure. Honestly that part could be more of me trying to do too much at once, but at the same time, perhaps not. Either way, Clock Tower is a game of multiple endings, horrifying themes, and unforgettable experiences. If you are a fan of horror and never given this game a go, find a way to. It is worth every second!
As always thanks for reading! I'll be taking a little bit of a break as I work on my top 20 favorite SNES games countdown. So that means that I'm planning on holding off on other blogs until that is finished. It's a work in progress and it shouldn't take too long to do!
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