The Clock Tower

The Clock Tower is a text and sound adventure game written in fennel for the Autumn Lisp Game Jam 2025

How to Play

This is a traditional text adventure game. The game ends when you have performed a certain action, which will hopefully become clear as you make progress. 

I will be your hands, eyes, and ears. Give short commands, and I will report the results of your actions. Use cardinal compass directions NORTH, EAST, SOUTH, WEST (or just N, E, S, W) for movement, as well as UP and DOWN. This game does not use the so-called "blue jay" directions NE, SE, SW, NW. You can do things like OPEN TRAPDOOR and TAKE THE MYSTERIOUS MUSHROOM and DROP THE CAT. INVENTORY (or just I) shows what you are carrying. X is an abbreviation for EXAMINE. Uppercase and lowercase make no difference when entering commands.

The game features dynamic audio. You'll hear the sounds that result from your commands, as well as seeing the text descriptions. Even your player character may be affected by sounds they hear! Use the commands MUTE, UNMUTE, VOLUME (VOLUME UP, VOLUME DOWN, VOLUME 5, VOLUME 10) to control the audio. At some point in your journey, it may be helpful to know that you can TUNE THE RADIO. It is possible to win the game without audio.

See the CREDITS file for information about the origin of the game.

Have fun!

Running the Game

This is a text-based game that runs in the console.

• On Windows, download clocktower-windows.zip, unzip it, and run clocktower.exe.

• On Linux, install your operating system's love package, download clocktower.love, and run in a terminal:

  love clocktower.love

• On macOS, download Love2D for macOS, unzip the package, and copy love.app to the /Applications folder. Then open a terminal, change to the directory where clocktower.love is saved, and run:

  /Applications/love.app/Contents/MacOS/love clocktower.love

Source Code

The file clocktower.fossil is a Fossil repository. It contains the source code, change history, wiki, and tickets. Make a directory for a checkout of the repository, then check out the repository:

mkdir clocktower
cd clocktower
fossil open ../clocktower.fossil

Then you can do things like fossil timeline to get a log of changes, or fossil ui to open a browser to the web interface. See the Fossil quick start for more guidance. The "day-10" tag points to the version of the code that was submitted to the game jam. Use fossil up day-10 to check out that version.

The Fossil repository is also browseable online at https://chiselapp.com/user/grumblyharmonics/repository/clocktower.

The file clocktower-web.zip is a flat copy of the source code of the version of the code that was submitted to the game jam, without commit history, wiki, or tickets.