Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time

Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of Time
Developer:  Stickmen Studios
Category:  Puzzle Platformer
Released:  Oct 2010
Usual Price:  £2.99
Hours Played:  2
Controller Compatible:  No
Rating:  0 Stars

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Doc Clock is a prime example of a game which features interesting ideas but which fails in its execution. If only they had polished it more by making the movement of the protagonist more fluid and the controls less damn clunky. It's a case of so near yet so very far for Doc Clock: The Toasted Sandwich of time.

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Menus, Progress & Stats

Menus are pretty much non-exisent. You get a pop-up box on starting the game that gives resolution tweaks and asks if you want to play in full-screen or windowed mode. Then, it's straight to the title-page which gives you the choice to start a new game or continue with the old one. Yep, that means just one profile and no level-select screen. With no charting of progress in the menus it seems that developers have gone for the very basics when it comes to menus, progress and stats - although to be fair there is a map-screen offered in the journal while in-game. 

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Gameplay

With graphics and soundtrack reminding me a lot of the Professor Fizzwhizzle games, this little offering is a 2D sidescroller that has you moving our eponymous hero around various landscapes. There is a small adventure element in that you collect things in the environment with your mechanical arm and place them in your sack (or inventory) to be used later. The idea is that you travel to the exit of the level by using the various items to overcome obstacles. Blocks of wood, for example, enable you to climb up tricky edges and build bridges over gaping abysses while propellers and umbrellas can be attached to your car to fly and to float around.

There is a lot of attempts at humour in the game and this comes in the form of the doc's insulting sack. You can also rewind time so that you can undo mistakes (which works very well) and you have a journal which keeps you informed. All this may seem fine and dandy but Doc Clock falls down on movement and controls. Moving at just 1mph Doc Clock himself moves painfully slowly and this in itself causes frustration. However, the way he moves objects around can also be quite stressful with items not really clicking together very effectively. The slow, trundling car also ends up turning upside-down a lot and you often have to dismantle the whole shebang and put it back together again before proceeding.

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Conclusion

If the developers had taken a little more time in the programing department by allowing objects to click together easier (and not making the car look so bloody ridiculous while driving) and just making the game a little more forgiving then it would have been a more enjoyable game. No one likes to attempt to make a simple bridge over a dozen times because of dodgy collision detection - and neither do they want to take the same amount of tries to make a simple jump that causes them to scream in anger and want to insta-uninstall the game!  

Although some parts of the game are mildly interesting, it is not really a title that calls me back and I doubt very much that I will be jumping back into this game any time soon.