Clock Tower: Rewind Review (PS5) – A Timepiece of Horror History

As a big retro horror fan, one of my favorite movies is The Lair of the White Worm. I should warn you though, this hidden horror gem is not a “great” movie in the traditional sense. It’s incredibly campy and the acting gets uneven. But it’s also a movie about a Scottish snake cult starring a young Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi. It’s a fun if weird time. And let me tell you, I couldn’t help but think of it while playing Clock Tower: Rewind, another oddly charming horror title that is decidedly stuck in the 90s.

Game Name: Clock Tower: Rewind
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC
Developers: WayForward, Limited Run Games, Human Entertainment 
Publishers: WayForward, Limited Run Games, Sun Corporation, Capcom, Human Entertainment
Release Date: October 29th, 2024
Price: $19.99

Speaking of the ’90s, remember collector’s DVD sets with tons of cool special features? For children of the 2000s, you may have missed out. I’m sorry. But you can remedy that here, as Clock Tower: Rewind recreates that experience for video games. It takes the 1995 horror classic and adds a ton of new features to the disc, including interviews, comics, a digital museum, and a music player.

Notably, the game includes two versions: Rewind and Original. Rewind is the enhanced version of the game, with both “quality-of-life” updates and content restored from the First Fear edition of Clock Tower. Original is exactly what it sounds like—the original 1995 game. Generally, Rewind is the recommended way to play, with some caveats.

The Hour of Clock Tower

Clock Tower: Rewind starts with the same introduction as the original. Orphan Jennifer arrives at Clock Tower, a large mansion, with three of her friends and their teacher. Things quickly go awry as her friends disappear, and a man with comically large yet all-the-more-deadly scissors appears. While none of this is updated, booting up the game provides a new and very stylish animated title intro. Why does the opening theme sound like a James Bond number? No idea, but it goes hard.

So, how does Clock Tower, the granddaddy of stealth horror, play today? Well, it depends on your expectations. In terms of controls, it’s all decidedly retro. You move Jennifer across the 2D screen by going left or right. To select objects, you use a cursor, which is par for the course for ‘90s adventure games. On top of that, you also have stamina for running and a panic button as a last-ditch resort, which also uses stamina.

Any Time Now

In the two to three-hour runtime, your goal is to escape the mansion as Jennifer and, hopefully, figure out what’s going on along the way. I say hopefully because Clock Tower boasts a number of endings, some with more plot than others. It’s a fun gimmick that adds replayability and highlights why the original was such a hit in Japan (this is the title’s first proper port to the West). On top of that, rooms and items appear in different places with each playthrough. RNG also determines how likely Jennifer is to survive or successfully hide.

As such, RNG is both a blessing and a curse. It keeps playthroughs of the game fresh. You’re never certain exactly where an item will be or which interaction you might have. At the same time, it can make survival feel a bit arbitrary—a matter of either surviving an encounter or reloading the game.

A perfect example of this double-edged scissor blade comes from Scissorman himself. Or rather, his new implementation in Rewind. In this version, the creepy scissor goblin can appear at pretty much any moment to chase poor Jennifer. Naturally, this makes the game scarier, keeping you constantly on your toes. But it can also wear out its welcome quickly. Add the RNG of hiding success onto the RNG of him randomly appearing, and this created one loop in which I spent almost ten minutes trying to shake the freaky fellow. And since you can’t interact with puzzles while he’s following you, I couldn’t advance until I gave him the slip.

Let’s Do The Time Warp

Clock Tower: Rewind introduces another new feature—its namesake. Players can rewind the game back a few seconds. That said, I almost never used this feature. Sure, rewinding can put you back before a game over, but selecting “continue” after a game over places you in a safer position, granting a tiny breather before Scissorman appears once more.

Despite these frustrations, I still found Clock Tower: Rewind to be an enjoyably spooky time. The puzzles aren’t too tough, and I quickly got the hang of putting Jennifer in motion while using my cursor to scan the area for items. As the plot (and body count) builds, I found myself appreciating the influence this little game has had on so many horror titles.

Ultimately, Clock Tower: Rewind is a little piece of horror history. And while it’s not technically the “best” version of the game, the special features are engaging. I particularly enjoyed the motion comics—unlocked by playing—and the developer interviews. Playing the original version is a bit wobbly, but even that feels like a fun throwback. I could see Clock Tower being a fun experience with friends over, watching a player battle with horrors—RNG and otherwise—to see how far they get. Like The Lair of the White Worm, Clock Tower: Rewind may not be a polished masterpiece, but it’s a great horror experience.

Review Disclosure Statement: Clock Tower: Rewind was provided to us by WayForward for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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