The Shadow in the Cathedral

by Ian Finley and Jon Ingold profile

Episode 1 of Klockwerk
Fantasy
2009

Web Site

Return to the game's main page

Reviews and Ratings

5 star:
(15)
4 star:
(11)
3 star:
(4)
2 star:
(0)
1 star:
(0)
Average Rating:
Number of Ratings: 30
Write a review


Previous | << 1 2 >> | Next | Show All


- aluminumoxynitride, August 13, 2023

- Ms. Woods, July 25, 2023

- autumnc, June 6, 2023

- pieartsy (New York), June 1, 2023

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
St. Newton, St. Babbage, St. Breguet (hallowed be their names)., June 24, 2021
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Fantasy

Isaac Newton: Mathematical Lawmaker.
Charles Babbage: Father of the Computer.
Abraham-Louis Breguet: Master-Horologist.

These intellectual giants played front-stage roles in a cultural movement during the 17th and 18th century where natural phenomena were being pulled out of the realms of chaotic randomness or transcendental intentionality and grasped in terms of their inner mathematical and mechanical orderliness.
The passage of Time ( Abraham-Louis Breguet), the patterns of Thought ( Charles Babbage), the regularities of Motion and the intricacies of Calculation ( Isaac Newton) were captured both in logical/mathematical deductions in the mind and in mechanical contraptions of cogs and chains.

While aiding in freeing the human intellect of religious dogmatic thinking and opening up the path of naturalistic explanation and exploitation of the world, its mysteries and its resources, this mechanistical worldview carries within itself a rigidity not dissimilar to religious dogma. Once Nature is caught in Logic and Clockwork, it is unchanging and deterministic.

The world of The Shadow in the Cathedral exists as an exemplar of this rigid-mechanistic historical path. The cathedral from the title is a worshipping place for the three saints mentioned above. Worshippers make the sign of the lever when they PRAY. Priests gather around an altar and bow to the clockwork in the tower. Mechanical order replaces/equates divine order, with very similar institutions to uphold that order.

“The candles move in the space between floor and ceiling, the way the stars move between Earth and the Great Darkness of Heaven.They follow winding metal tracks that cross and recross along the length of the Great Hall, and as they move, pools of light form and then dissolve, so that some parts of the chamber are brightly lit at times whilst others are quite dark. The candles move day and night, with automatic systems to replace those that burn down to the stub.”

This paragraph might seem somewhat wordy, but it captures the atmosphere of the game-world perfectly by elaborating on something as down-to-earth as candlelight while the bigger background is never laid out this explicitly. Instead it has to be inferred from these detailed minor descriptions. To this reviewer’s preferences, a leather-bound tome on the development and history of the clock-bound civilization to LOOK UP BABBAGE would have been very welcome indeed.

Wren is a lowly clock-polishing grease monkey in the Abbey. While cleaning the Abbot’s grandfather-clock, he overhears a conspiracy between a mysterious Figure in Grey and his Abbot to mumblemumble…

When even the Archbisshop will not hear him, it is upon Wren himself to unravel the nefarious scheme.

Story takes precedence in every way in this game. The authors have gone to great lengths to eliminate annoyances for the player. When there is an important action to be taken, numerous but well-considered commands act as a trigger for that action to further the plot. There are calm exploratory and conversational parts where both Wren and the player can catch their breaths and learn more about the city. There are frantic chase sequences where it seems both Wren and the player will be out of breath a moment later but still push onward.

And of course, there are obstacles. Many, many obstacles. Not one of them breaks the flow of the story. And some of those puzzles are beautiful. Beautiful in that they combine storytelling, logic, engineering, associative reasoning and storytelling (yes, I meant to write that twice…) to engage the player and commit the Wren-and-Player team more and more to solve the mystery together.

Two puzzles are extraordinarily good. They are also great examples of the breadth of reasoning the player is asked to do . One is a completely down-to-earth physics question (). The other is an excercise in associative programming (.

During Wren’s investigation, he will meet several people on his way, both friendly (good for Wren and the player needing clues) and malignant (great for the authors and the reader needing suspense). Although the conversations are ASK/TELL, they do not descend in awkwardness. Sometimes the characters won’t answer, but they are almost always believably occupied with other worries or tasks of their own. And even while they are otherwise engaged, their dismissive answers make sense in context. Nifty programming and great attention to both the detail of the immediate surroundings and the big picture of where Wren has gone before.

The Shadow in the Cathedral is a remarkable feat of intertwined puzzle-engineering, worldbuilding and philosophy.

Of course it is sad to have the story broken off after what should be the first chapter of a series. A word of wisdom to the prospective player: let the clock’s tick-tock take you to the bell, and let your imagination take over from there…

I loved every minute, hour and day of this game.

And a small but hopefully annoying heads-up to the authors: the chapter-titles are misaligned. for example: (Spoiler - click to show)the chapter-title says “The Rooftops of St. Philip” after the chase across the rooftops. By then Wren is already safe with Covalt. This is just an example. Every chapter’s title (except 1 & 2) comes after the story it’s supposedly about. A grating flaw in such a great piece. I would find it hard to believe that you would not return to The Shadow of the Cathedral to put the titles in order. (or is this a reflection of the rebellion against the clock?).

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Karlok (Netherlands), April 14, 2021

- William Chet (Michigan), September 10, 2020

- kierlani, May 13, 2020

- Zape, November 30, 2019

- whjohnson22, August 28, 2019

- Laney Berry, January 31, 2019

- piehole, March 22, 2018

- tekket (Česká Lípa, Czech Republic), August 10, 2017

- Wanderlust, August 3, 2017

- Aerobe, April 26, 2017

- Denk, November 4, 2016

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Clocked it, May 27, 2016

This formerly commercial text adventure game really goes to great efforts to ensure its accessible to its target audience (of schoolkids). You will be subtly nudged, quietly coerced and gently goaded towards the correct commands to proceed. There are almost no red herrings, explorable areas are tightly constrained, and there is no death. If that's not enough, invisiclues and maps are also available.

It's a shame, then, that the story cannot quite live up to this excellence of execution. A fascinating setting, where Newtonian mechanics has become a religion, is squandered in service of a dull villain-steals-a-macguffin plot. Your character, a low-level clock mechanic, gives chase, explores the Steampunk city, solves some puzzles along the way, that's it. It's rote Harry Potter level stuff. It's the first part of the aborted "Klockwerk" series, which will never see the light of day since the company shut down, so it has to do the grunt-work of introducing people, places and concepts, without any of the pay-off, thanks to its cliff-hanger ending.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- E. W. B., March 2, 2016

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Clockpunk game of Anchorhead-like length and quality, February 3, 2016
by MathBrush
Related reviews: 2-10 hours

What an enjoyable game! My heart was racing in chapter 12. This is a quite long game set in a world dominated by clockwork; the religion, the city, the people's mindset, everything is based on clockwork (a funny moment was seeing that pagans worshipped non-mechanical timekeeping devices like water clocks or sundials).

You play an assistant clock keeper who must investigate a future robbery. The game is a very long example of what I call the linear thriller type of game. You encounter a more or less linear sequence of challenges where you are given a good amount of hints on what to do, there is always a sense of urgency, and everything you do is the right thing in just the nick of time.

This game is what I wish the illustrated book Hugo had been from its cover; you jump and leap and fall all through a giant clock early on, you use an early calculating machine like a computer, etc.

The writing is as good as Anchorhead, in my mind, and the implementation is smooth. The story wasn't as compelling to me at first, but the last few chapters really got me into it.

The game has probably not received very much attention because it was a commercial game for a while. But everyone should try it now.

Was this review helpful to you?   Yes   No   Remove vote  
More Options

 | Add a comment 

- Sobol (Russia), April 24, 2015

- kala (Finland), April 20, 2015

- Thrax, March 25, 2015

- Mr. Patient (Saint Paul, Minn.), March 1, 2015

Adventure Gamers

[...] an extremely enjoyable, bordering on exceptional, adventure game. It's thoughtfully implemented for the most part, and the authors demonstrate deft prose through which they've crafted a rich and highly immersive world dominated by clockwork technology. The puzzles may be considered too easy by some and it is not without its flaws, but these are neither frequent nor pervasive enough to seriously damage the experience. If you at all enjoy steampunk and know your way around a text parser, you should absolutely play this game.

You wrote this review - Revise it | Direct link | Add a comment

- Sdn (UK), August 11, 2013


Previous | << 1 2 >> | Next | Show All | Return to game's main page