When you start to seriously think about time, many people will descend into existential crises. Have I done enough with my life? Am I where I should be for my age? You know, the classics.

Luckily, Clock Simulator is NOT a glaring spotlight on these greatest of human insecurities. It’s something a little more light hearted than that.

So what is it? Well, it’s a simulator…about clocks. A rhythm game where said rhythm is based on the passage of time. This leads to a bunch of mini-games, nicely presented with a quirky-come-minimal art style. It’s certainly a unique concept, but how good is it in the long run?

Some of you may have experience playing this for cheaper than the Nintendo Switch asking price, on either Steam or your smartphone.

The added extra for Switch players is the multiplayer elements, where you can challenge others on their internal body clock’s accuracy. While this seems good on paper, especially given the humorous graphical style and reactionary gameplay, these actually lead to matches of silent concentration - sure to change the complexion of your pre-drinks. It’s rare that a game so simple can get this intense, which in single-player is great. For multi-player, however, it can get a little awkwardly quiet for couch gaming, and the stripped back simplicity can drag after a couple rounds.

And that’s all I can really say about Clock Simulator. While my girlfriend’s heart continues to melt at the sight of the cube pigs oinking in their own game of jumprope, that’s the only real memorable part of this flash-in-the-pan experience. 

The problem is they’ve painted themselves into a corner by basing all of their games on seconds, essentially killing the potential of variety. Racking my brain about what they could do with a sequel  and ideas surrounded time-perfect jumps in platforming levels, a countdown puzzler (think pipe dream) where you can only make moves on every second - really ratcheting up the tension as you have to both race against the clock, but yet also follow it. There are other options there, which I hope they do explore for the betterment of this game concept. It’s novel, but you’ll have your 20 minutes of fun with it then never play it again.

If you need to play this, save your money and get the experience on mobile or Steam. But as far as rhythm games go, you’re not missing much here.

5/10