Clockwork Ambrosia Review

Clockwork Ambrosia is a game that has been in development for 14 years! It is a 2D action platformer that is set in a retro-steampunk futuristic world. This game is a true metroidvania where you will be revisiting multiple areas as you unlock abilities and items that will allow you to progress to new locations you couldn’t before.

We play as Iris, an airship pilot who is shot down by a mechanical dragon and crashes onto the mysterious island of Aspida. All the areas you explore are ruined, and the whole human population has vanished; instead, we have hostile machines that have taken over. So with a handy Pulse Breaker gun, she sets off to take down the robotic army and discover what occurred here in this run-and-gun platformer.

Our protagonist must travel through ruined, biopunk-industrial environments to uncover why the population vanished and was replaced by hostile machines and strange creatures, all while using a deep, modular 150+ modification weapon-crafting system to craft the most effective loadout that she can.

Iris, will have four different weapons that she is able to use: the versatile Pulse Breaker that can fire regular and charged shots; a Revolver that fires fast and can be modded to shoot upwards or down; a Missile Launcher that can break armour; and a Grenade Launcher that fires sticky grenades. However, Iris won’t be using the stock models of these firearms.
Instead, the game focuses on modding your weapons with the more than 100 options to alter them and make your own creation. Each gun has multiple parts to upgrade, like the core, energy round, and charge shot. Your firearm can have the mods equipped to it changed at any point in time, so if you find that your custom build isn’t working great, you are able to swap pieces to make it stronger.

While using all your custom firearms, you don’t have to worry about searching for extra ammo, as your supply is never-ending; you only have to worry about which one is the best weapon for the situation. With over 100 different mods to collect, you can make a lot of crazy weapons to defeat all the monsters and rogue robots that live on this island.
Aspida has a variety of environments to explore; you will travel through mines, a forest, underwater areas, and scaffolding that takes you high into the air. The areas you explore look great with bright colours, pixel visuals, and animated elements like falling leaves that bring this world to life. Clockwork Ambrosia has an awesome soundtrack with a variety of super catchy music that fits with what is happening in the story and is complemented by realistic effects from weapons firing, glass breaking, and when shrapnel or other items hit the water; the splash sounds so good!

Once you acquire the map, you will be able to pick the locations that you have visited that will require you to come back once you have the power-up or item that you need to get through that area. With a map this large, it would be really difficult to remember the locations that you needed to go back to. At first, you will have to walk through the whole map to get to the other areas that are far from you, but as you progress, you will unlock warp points that will let you easily fast-travel around the island.

 Instead of a store, you purchase items from characters you meet up with on your adventure, like Stathis, who was the chief of research at the ASPIDA company, or Thalia, who sells you items that you can use on your weapon or to power up Iris. Scrap metal that you collect from destroying enemies on your journey is used as the in-game currency, so be sure to collect as much as you can. Some items, like the one that provides additional health bars, can be very pricey but are worth having.

Weapon creation is the main focus of Clockwork Ambrosia; you need to explore this world to unlock movement abilities for Iris so she can get access to hidden areas, discover new weapons and mods, and get stronger so she can destroy all the aggressive robots that she finds.

The enemies you encounter can be deceptively difficult to defeat; I found the flying bird enemies to be particularly challenging. Since Iris doesn’t have a huge amount of health, it only took a few well-placed hits and I was dead. You have three retries before you have to start back at the last save point you had visited, but with but by using a retry, you will revive with only one block of health, not a fully replenished health bar. If you fully die, anything you collected after you last saved is gone, so that can get quite frustrating!

 There was one other thing with Clockwork Ambrosia that I had an issue with: the controls. They didn’t feel very precise, and the same button would be assigned to multiple tasks. Even though the game tells you what you need to hit for a certain action, like placing a pin on your map to make a spot. It says to hit the A (bottom face button), but it wouldn’t register, and swapping between the three options didn’t work. Since this is a run-and-gun 2D platformer, I would hope the controls would be more fluid and responsive.

Clockwork Ambrosia is a challenging run-and-gun metroidvania title that should definitely be played. There is a lot of exploration and weapon customisation here that is fun to experiment with to create your perfect build. Just realise that the controls might be a bit confusing and that you need to save as much as you can so you don’t lose any items or progress that you have made. It can get so frustrating when you defeat a strong boss or find an awesome weapon and lose it within a minute, making you replay that whole section!