Tick Tock: A Tale for Two (PC)

Tick Tock: A Tale for Two is a game you cannot play with only one copy. This exclusively multiplayer title requires both players to have purchased Tick Tock: A Tale for Two on their device, but thankfully, the game has spread itself across a few different systems to make playing cooperatively far more feasible. Available on mobile devices, the Nintendo Switch, and the PC, you can feasibly have both players in the same room playing without breaking the rules about keeping your screens to yourself, but this can also work as a game to play over the phone or via voice chat programs. It is a bit of a surprise that Other Tales Interactive didn’t go the same route as similar co-op games where additional players can join in for free through a website or an unpaid app, but the price of admission isn’t too steep even considering the two purchases, and more importantly, the game itself makes interesting use of the fact it has to be played across two separate devices.

 

Tick Tock: A Tale for Two begins with players selecting whether they’re player 1 or player 2, this determining which specific areas they can access and the information they’ll be provided. Both players receive a letter and a clock from renowned clockmaker Amalie Ravn, the two being invited to play a game that will transport them into the past and through an ever-shifting little village. To make progress the players need to work together, neither one having the necessary details on their own to move forward or solve most of the puzzles they’ll be presented with. It’s not just a matter of communicating instructions to each other either, as the buildings found in the village contain puzzles and riddles whose design might not be clear when you first find them.

Tick Tock: A Tale for Two is primarily navigated like a point and click game, relying on touch screen controls for most devices but the mouse cursor does the work on a regular PC instead. Objects relevant to the puzzles can be clicked on, dragged around, and interacted with easily, but many areas do have red herrings that never play a part in the work at hand. At each step through time in the history you’re exploring the game tries to limit the amount of potential actions you can take so that you and your partner won’t spend too long looking for how to make progress. There is a sequence of actions that need to be taken in the proper order to move on with the plot, so somewhat limiting the available actions keeps things from going astray too much while also adding nice little progression beats to celebrate. Figuring out how to get into a locked building or finding the right item or clue in another area is usually followed quickly by an excited rush over to a puzzle or problem that previously stumped you, and it’s this sense of joint discovery that makes Tick Tock: A Tale for Two such an enjoyable multiplayer experience.

 

While describing certain puzzles in detail would reveal their solutions, there are many cleverly constructed ones to work out with your fellow player. Many times the details you need are split between players but how they connect is a puzzle in itself. Even story details are often cut into slivers that make little sense if only viewed by one player, but by relaying information and realizing where things slide into place you can begin to unravel the plot as well, the mystery hanging over the game having a cute conclusion that plays off the slight eeriness of the situation. While there is no real horror element to the tale, the emptiness of the still village at night lends itself well to uncovering the truth of the time travel tale you’ve stumbled into. The game is rather short even if you and your partner don’t pick up on the clues very quickly though, but this condition comes with the benefit of the game never dabbling in plain, uninspired puzzles. Everything is fairly unique even if they are recontexualizing something you’ve seen before such as the train route map or locks with a compass style mechanism. Everything relevant to your current batch of puzzles is also contained within one time period to avoid having to remember too many important details, each part a little episode of connected riddles and quandaries to overcome.

There is still a typical rhythm to problem solving though. When you enter a new building it’s best to fiddle with anything suspicious to see if it reveals its purpose or is hiding information, and as you relay what you’re finding to the other player, it is surprisingly natural for certain clues to lock into place. You might not know why this machine with moving symbols is displaying numbers and arrows on its screen until you and your partner begin experimenting or utilizing the unique contexts you have to uncover the puzzle’s true nature. The interior of a building can be completely different between players, meaning you might not even be looking at the same object as you try to figure out how they interact, and there are many nifty word puzzles where you need to find the hidden meanings in a story or letter to properly tune clocks, radios, and other objects.

 

There is no need for outside knowledge to win in Tick Tock: A Tale for Two save for basic things like the direction described by words like clockwise and anti-clockwise, but even when you see something that could be prohibitive like Morse code in the game, it’s relation to the puzzles is not interpreting the flickers as letters or numbers. When the game mentions specific jewels for one puzzle, it includes descriptions of them to use as reference. The game isn’t simplistic because of this though. You may be using tools that have different purposes in reality as ingredients in sometimes supernatural puzzles, but fitting with the focus on time and clocks, measurements of time are often major clues and needing to do things with correct timing also crop up. Mostly it is rather relaxed though, meaning you and your partner can tackle the trials at whatever pace suits you. Perhaps to keep the difficulty from being dependent on two players who are in sync and excellent at communication and reasoning, the game never really hits a point where a lot is being asked of the coordination.  Tick Tock: A Tale for Two seems content to be a game you won’t spend too long on and likely doesn’t want to alienate potential players by asking for complex reasoning, but there is enough to the concept of puzzles split across two sources of information and interaction that it remains interesting to play.

THE VERDICT: Tick Tock: A Tale for Two may be rather short for a puzzle game, but this cooperative puzzle adventure manages to hit an excellent sweet spot with its riddles and challenges split across the screens of two different devices. Coordinating problem solving and sharing information split across two similar but alternate worlds makes for an interesting social gaming experience, and the variety in the clever communication puzzles keeps things engaging even when repeated story themes like the importance of time crop up across them. An eerie but interesting tale is puzzled out as well and the game avoids its puzzles having too many variables or being spread out across too many areas so as to keep them manageable. It could have been interesting to see it explore the split perspective style of play even more, but Tick Tock: A Tale for Two maintains a consistent level of quality even if it’s not aiming to be something bigger or more involved.

 

And so, I give Tick Tock: A Tale for Two for PC…

A GOOD rating. Well designed logic and communication puzzles are the key to Tick Tock: A Tale for Two’s quality, and while it could have shot for greatness by pushing the split perspective idea into deeper concepts and more involved puzzles, Other Tales Interactive probably went the right route with its properly contained designs that will appeal to a larger demographic. Tick Tock: A Tale for Two doesn’t sacrifice difficulty for accessibility, players needing some degree of problem solving skill to realize what’s going on when they’re both receiving incomplete pictures and only half of the necessary clues. However, by keeping the variables limited, the game makes it possible to draw clear connections from the clues you’ve collaboratively deciphered. Much of the challenges is bridging the gap between your world and the one viewed by the other player, moving together as a team once you’ve discovered the meaning of the information that was split between the two of you. There are definitely those satisfying moments where everything clicks or a new clue appears that you immediately know the application of, your adventure through this puzzle-filled mystery providing many small moments of excitement and satisfaction as your teamwork properly pays off. The scope and size is mostly what holds it back from being more, the game more about those small moments where things come together rather than deeply involved multi-step trials.

 

Tick Tock: A Tale for Two could possibly be played by one person cheating with two devices and still be enjoyable since you’d still have to suss out how things connect rather than just immediately seeing the solution once the data is put together. Still, the cooperative multiplayer is definitely the more interesting means of playing the title. That extra layer of needing to work out how to best communicate and having the revelation of what will work shared with another human being turns out to be one of the game’s greatest appeals. Splitting the game across two alternate worlds viewed through different screens adds an extra dimension to the information sharing puzzles that shouldn’t be overlooked or worked around, because while this game isn’t exactly transcendent or intensely innovative with the concept, it has built a clever little two player puzzle adventure out of it all the same.