Escapement

Turn-based tactics inside a colossal clock tower, where the battlefield is the gear mechanism.

Five wind-up automata are all that stands between the rust-blight and the escapement at the tower's heart. Hold it until the hour strikes — twelve teeth.

The catch

At the end of every turn the machine advances one tooth. The three gear rings turn, counter-rotating; the crossings between them swing out of reach; and every piece on the board — yours and the blight's — is carried wherever the metal takes it. Nothing walks. The floor moves.

So a line you hold this turn is a line the machine dissolves two turns later. There are only ever four crossings between each pair of rings, and which four changes every tooth. The single gate into the escapement is somewhere different every turn.

The real skill is reading the cycle before you commit.

Winding, not healing

An automaton is wound, not healed. It starts with six winding and spends it:

Action	Cost
Move one tooth	1
Strike adjacent rust	2
Wind an ally (gives them 3)	2
Hold still	free — restores 1, or 3 on a mainspring node

The mainspring nodes ride the gears too, so the good place to stand is somewhere different every turn.

The blight does not deal damage. It drains winding. An automaton at zero seizes: it stops being a unit and becomes terrain, sitting in the way until another automaton reaches it and spends 2 to wind it back up. You do not lose an automaton — you let it run down.

Your five

Governor, Lance, Anvil, Sparrow and Winder, each with its own reach and power. Against them: spore, creep and canker, crawling in through the outer vents and climbing inward, ring by ring.

How to play

• Left-click an automaton to take command of it. The cells it can reach light up, and the bar at the bottom names the action and its cost before you spend it.
• Left-click a lit cell to move there, a rust to strike it, an ally to wind it, or the automaton itself to hold.
• Tab cycles to the next automaton. Space ends the turn.
• Right-drag orbits the machine, scroll zooms. H toggles the help.
• R starts a fresh hour once the match is over.

Read the three ring colours on the board before you commit:

• teal — where the selected automaton can step, this tooth only
• violet — where that same cell will have travelled once the machine turns
• red — where the rust will be next tooth

The violet ring is the whole game. You are not choosing a place; you are choosing a place one tooth from now.

How it ends

The hour strikes if you are still holding after twelve teeth.

You lose if the blight reaches the escapement, or if every automaton seizes at once.

Worth seeing

The tower itself keeps working behind the fight — great spoked wheels turning in the dark, counterweights hanging on their cables, coloured light falling through the stained glass onto polished brass. Pull the camera back mid-match and watch a tooth land: the whole board turns as one piece, and every automaton rides its platform round.