Clockwork Ambrosia by developer Realmsoft and publisher OI games - PC(Steam) review by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
What was your last vacation like? Did you visit an island? Tour the local industries? Get your airship shot down by a giant mechanical dragon? Well Iris from Clockwork Ambrosia has, and boy is she going to need a new vacation when she’s done with this 2D metroidvania adventure.
Clockwork Ambrosia is a rather ambitious metroidvania adventure developed by a small group of people who really went for something a little different here, and I’m all for it. Setting the scene, we have Iris, a young girl traveling by airship while on vacation. Upon arriving at an island she is shot down by a mechanical dragon. Thankfully for Iris, and eventually the inhabitants of the island, Iris survives the crash and begins to set out to explore the island and discover more about what’s going on. Turns out it’s a robot uprising, that can’t be good.
So begins the tale of Iris and her adventure across the island. Along the way she will encounter a range of interesting characters, enemies, and treasures. To help get Iris through the tribulations of the island, you will need a wide variety of different items: equipment, relics, and of course weapons. Relics will act as your one time pick-up that will give you a new ability or allow you to access more areas of the game.
Equipment involves your weapons, two of which you can have equipped to swap between at a time, but also includes the rest of your apparel, such as shirt, skirt, boots, and gloves. An interesting choice to have so many pieces of equipment, but mixing and matching to fit your playstyle or exploration needs is actually quite nice. If you also take into account how you can expand your equipment slots to eventually equip two pieces of equipment for each slot, and suddenly you get a ton of customization options. Additionally, as you beat enemies they may drop crafting materials that will allow you to upgrade your equipment once, either enhancing the current effect or adding a new one. For example you can wear goggles as a piece of equipment, and upgrading a specific one adds an item collection function that draws items to you.
Speaking of customization options, let’s finally take a look at what is probably the most focal point of Clockwork Ambrosia: the weapons. As you explore the island you will pick up some weapons to help fight off the aggressive local fauna and raging robots. You’ll be able to get a blaster, a rocket launcher, a revolver, and a grenade launcher. Don’t let the fact that there are only four weapons fool you however, because Clockwork Ambrosia has a ridiculously extensive weapon modding system. I could tell you how each weapon works, but depending on what mods you attach your functionality could be completely different from what I liked to use. The only real hard fact is that the rockets and grenades tend to be better for dealing with armoured enemies, although based on your setup even that may not be strictly true.
Clockwork Ambrosia has a bunch of different modding slots for each weapon, and not only can you mix and match mods that fit the slot type whenever you want, even on the fly, but you can discover weapon upgrades and mods that can drastically change your weapon. For example, you could discover a rocket upgrade that allows you to equip an extra firing mod, or a blaster upgrade that allows you to use two different mod types in one of the slots instead of the default one. You can also set up your weapons to be general use or specific use too. A good example of this is the blaster. You can front-load the blaster to deal enhanced damage and consume all your shots at once in a single forward blast, or you could set it up so that you have a huge fan of shots spreading out in front of you. I personally preferred the fan, but how you use the weapon is up to you.
Another interesting aspect of the weapons is that they all have ammo. The blaster works on a sort of energy capacity that needs time to recover, whereas the other three weapons you need to reload, either when out of shots or manually. Depending on mods your weapons can have more or less ammo slots as well. Using my rocket setup, at one point I had I think eight shots available before needing to reload, but at the end of the game I was down to five in exchange for firepower. It’s really cool to be able to get such a diverse feeling from the same weapon depending on how you change it yourself.
So, we’ve talked a lot about customization mechanics, but how about the core gameplay progression? Well, the developers also decided to implement some cool ideas here, but for the most part it plays like a tried and true metroidvania. You have side-scrolling adventures through the island set up as individual “rooms”, shooting up enemies, exploring for chests and items, fighting bosses, collecting power-ups that allow you to explore new areas, and collecting crafting materials. You can pick up a cartography set pretty early on that allows you access to a pretty traditional metroidvania type map, where rooms are square blocks with key points of interest noted. You can also put down your own indicators of a question mark, item bag, or circle with a line through it in order to mark areas of interest or where you need an ability or item to get through later. There are hidden rooms and walls, so be careful and pay attention to your surroundings.
The cool aspects implanted by the dev team revolve around how the exploration functions. Basically, while the first few areas are mandatory, after a point you are pretty much free to explore in whatever direction you want how you want. While I’m not completely sure it’s intended strictly speaking, I was able to finagle my way into areas I probably shouldn’t have been able to without a specific ability or item. Is this game breaking? No, because eventually you’ll have to explore around anyway, and I never got hard stuck in an area, and I didn’t really skip anything, but it is kinda nice if it was intended. For the most part ability upgrades are primarily for the area you’re currently exploring, and while they certainly help out in other areas, you do have some ways of getting around a lot of that, barring one or two exceptions and the final stretch of the game.
Ooh, and one of the things I thought was really cool? The map wraps horizontally. If you keep going left enough, you will end up on the right. You can see this if you open up the map and hold left or right, the map will eventually come full circle. I think the last time I saw this done that I can remember was in Metroid Fusion, and even that was all hidden and you probably wouldn’t ever realize on a casual playthrough. While I would have liked a little more in the way of map customization icons, three felt too few to me, and that’s more of a 100% completionist. This comes from my metroidvania enthusiast mindset rather than a strictly inherent problem. Pro tip by the way, you may want to make personal notes written down about things to come back to or to investigate later, because I definitely found myself forgetting what some of my map markers were for.
I’ve got one last particularly interesting design decision to share, although I don’t know where I should put it exactly. As with almost all metroidvania titles, you’ll gain the abilities necessary to jump either higher or further. There are actually multiple ways to do this, and some involve equipment, which I wasn’t expecting. Normally exploration enhancement is done through permanent upgrades, and not say equipping a certain pair of boots. A really interesting choice, and while I’m not sure how most people will feel about this, I thought it was a really cool idea. Since the equipment can also be upgraded, this means if you invest in finding the upgrade resources this could help you out a lot. I can positively state that the exploration equipment made the last boss about 30% easier for me personally, although I assume others may prefer more combat focused gear for that.
Clockwork Ambrosia also has a really wonderful aesthetic to it. Somewhat reminiscent of older titles such as the Gameboy advance Metroid or the mid collection Megaman X games, Clockwork Ambrosia sports a bit more of a retro feeling graphic-wise, both in spritework and in background graphics. This actually works really well with the gameplay and thematic design, and I’m really happy to relive some of my nostalgic metroidvania retro past. The sprites are also really expressive for the different characters, which is pretty impressive considering they all have their own personalities that really show through the animation and design work. The background music collection is also really well put together and is fitting for the areas they play in, and I found enhanced the ambience of the region I was exploring.
While I absolutely loved my adventures in Clockwork Ambrosia, there are a few areas that caused some issues. The most notable is probably an issue with the soundtrack looping. Occasionally the soundtrack would stop for about a full second before starting again during the looping sequence. I also found that if you transition areas too fast or often, the game might not play the correct soundtrack, instead playing the track from the area you came from instead of the one you have entered. Additionally, fast travel is unlocked fairly late into the game depending on your choices, so be prepared for that.
As a pretty much unavoidable issue in a game like this, boss difficulty is…well, a mixed bag I suppose? Early game bosses I found really easy, and the late game bosses I shredded because I had upgraded and modded my weapons to a dirty degree. Mid game bosses were a little tougher while I was figuring things out. Unfortunately this is really a matter of personal experience rather than balancing. If you feel the game is too easy, try experimenting with other weapons or mods, or maybe challenge yourself somehow. I managed to beat a few of the final set of bosses way too fast, but it’s really hard to balance that against players that may not have the same mods and skill level. It’s certainly a tough job balancing a game like this where you can take different routes and mod the heck out of your weapons, so this may be more on the player to figure out. Perhaps a difficulty option for increased boss health for those who want a greater challenge? According to the steam achievements I’ve explored more than 95% of the map, so take this with a grain of salt since I’ve unlocked a ridiculous amount of mod options and equipment.
In terms of gameplay, I discovered two things of note, although the specific situation they can happen in are a little restrictive. First up is screenwrapping issues. Basically, if you try and escape through an edge of a room you aren’t meant to, but manage to anyway, you’ll get put on the opposite side of where you were. I used this twice accidentally and ended up in a closed-off area I was supposed to go around to get to or solve a puzzle for. I’ll take this over the game crashing, and it’s not like it resulted in sequence breaking in these circumstances, but I’m sure there are areas of the game where this could produce some bigger issue. There was also a boss room near the top of the map that would shove me away after I beat the boss and tried to reenter later. I managed to power through by repeatedly dashing at the entryway, but it was certainly weird. Only the one time that ever happened though.
Overall I have to say that Colckwork Ambrosia is a really wonderful metroidvania title. With a really fun weapon and equipment customization mechanic, some rather unexpected ability upgrades, and a cast of interesting characters, I can wholeheartedly recommend Clockwork Ambrosia to any metroidvania fan. While there are some areas of concern, such as music looping, some minor glitches, and a map that definitely needs more pin options, and a sliding difficulty that’s super player dependent, the amount of chaotic fun you get from the weapon mod system and exploration dynamics certainly outweighs the minor issues. While a bit on the shorter side, clocking in at between 15 to 20 hours of gameplay, I’d say it’s well worth it.
Score: 9 / 10
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