''The Watchmaker'' is a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

adventure video game developed by Trecision and published by

Got Game Entertainment Got Game Entertainment, LLC was an American developer and publisher of videogames, based in Weston, Connecticut. Got Game chiefly published adventure games, with ARMA II being the most notable exception. In January 2011, founder Howard Horowitz re ...

in Europe in 2001 and in North America on June 1, 2002.

Gameplay

Plot

Development

The game was announced in August 2000. According to Trecision, ''The Watchmaker'' was in production for over 3 years. It was originally developed under the

working title A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...

''WM''. The game struggled to find a North American distributor, but was ultimately signed by

in early 2002, which released it that June.

Reception

''The Watchmaker'' received "mixed or average reviews" from critics, according to

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. Charles Herold of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' presented ''The Watchmaker'' with a negative review. He wrote, "The graphics are poor, the interface is unwieldy, the puzzles are tedious and the characters' voices are so inferior that one suspects they were recorded by the company's programmers and secretaries." John Brandon of ''

Computer Games Magazine ''Computer Games Magazine'' was a monthly computer and console gaming print magazine, founded in October 1988 as the United Kingdom publication ''Games International''. During its history, it was known variously as ''Strategy Plus'' (October 1 ...

'' concurred, writing that "''The Watchmaker'' is stuck in the dark ages of computer gaming". ''The Watchmaker'' was a nominee for ''

The Electric Playground ''EP Daily'' (formerly ''The Electric Playground'') is a daily news television show that covers video games, movies, TV shows, comic books, collectibles and gadgets. Created and executive produced by host Victor Lucas, and his Vancouver, British ...

''s 2002 "Best Adventure Game for PC" award, but lost to ''

Syberia ''Syberia'' is a franchise of graphic adventure games created by Belgian comic artist and video game developer Benoît Sokal. Set within an alternate universe designed by Sokal and introduced in the 1999 video game '' Amerzone'', the series ...

'' and ''

Silent Hill 2 is a 2001 survival horror game developed by Team Silent, a group in Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, and published by Konami. The game was released from September to November, originally for the PlayStation 2. The second installment in t ...

'' (tie).

References

External links

Official site
(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Watchmaker 2001 video games Adventure games Got Game Entertainment games Point-and-click adventure games Trecision games Video games developed in Italy Windows games Windows-only games