Clock Tower: The First Fear

The Short


Pros
- Horrifying, genuinely scary
- Conveys a sense of helplessness rarely found on any game
- Pixelated graphics still do a great job in bringing the horror
- Multiple endings, most of which do not end well for your main character
- Good mix of genuine chills and jump scares
- Very unique experience on the SNES

Cons
- Never came out in the US; you'll have to find a fan translation ROM if you want to play it
- Uses a point and click interface but doesn't support the mouse, making controls cumbersome
- Puzzles and areas can have convoluted and difficult solutions, making a guide almost a necessity
- While playing as a frightened, helpless girl is great from a horror perspective, but from a gameplay one it can become tiresome
- Story gets really weird, especially near the end

Believe it or not, this game is pretty dang creepy

The Long

First off, it is worth nothing that Clock Tower: The First Fear was never released in the United States. I was given a fan-translated ROM by a friend back in my game-making days, when I was using an DOS-based RPG making engine to make everything but RPGs with it. Having made two horror games already, my friend thought it would be interesting material, considering the engine we used was essentially limited to 16 bit graphics. What I found was a surprisingly creepy SNES experience, that rivals even modern horror games with how downright scary it is.

Clock Tower: The First Fear follows a story of several orphan girls who are brought to a house by a mysterious old woman who wants to adopt them. After the old lady leaves for a spell, the power in the house seems to go off, and as the girls go out and explore they are murdered one by one by a little man wielding a pair of giant scissors. ...Ok, that sounds really goofy now that I typed it, but trust me: it gets creepy.

He either makes really big scrapbooks, or she should climb faster. 

Thus begins your quest as the last (?) surviving girl to rescue whomever is left, find those responsible, and get out alive. Or you can just take the car and leave, if you want the bad ending. Clock Tower offers you lots of options (and I think about 7-8 different endings), so if you want to be a jerk and run off you can. Just don't think it'll end well.

Hint: It won't. 

The story in Clock Tower is relatively basic and has a few bizarre twists, as one would expect from a Japanese horror game. Something worth noting is the deaths of the other girls: there are several for each, many depending on what order you visit certain areas, and some of them are horrific. None of them are particularly gory (the game would probably get a "T" rating today) or even violent, but the game does an excellent job using its limited hardware power to produce some shocking kills. The first time you walk into a new area and find one of the girls in trouble, and despite all you do you can't save her, you'll get why this game freaks me out.

It's a real accomplishment, to say the least. Often when you are wandering around the mansion the only sounds are your footsteps. You'll go into rooms that require you to look at things you don't want to (hint: don't look behind the shower curtain. Nightmare fuel, that) all for the sake of puzzles, and the ambiant silence combined with the fact that any moment you or your friend might die is nerve-wracking. It's a seriously intense experience, even though the game would be considered extremely slow by today's gaming standards. 

This probably won't end well. 

Another aspect that keeps the horror going is the gameplay, for both good or bad. The general gist of the game is that your character's tension rises as scary things happen, like jump scares or seeing her friends murdered without being able to help them. If she's relatively calm you can control her decently, able to run from Scissorman whenever he pops out (and he does so randomly...or sometimes not at all...talk about tension). However, if her "panic" meter caps out, she starts making mistakes. Like fumbling with doors, or tripping when she's running, or being unable to stave off a direct attack. This means you have to be extremely careful to not scare the crap out of her (and her face reacts in the corner when you see particularly horrific things, which is a nice touch). If you lose your cool, you're done.

Seriously, do not click the shower curtain. Do not do it. 

Another thing that ramps up the tension (more for bad than good) is the controls. The game uses a "point and click" interface, which also is utilized for your main character's movement. This might have worked if Clock Tower supported that goofy mouse that came with Mario Paint, but it doesn't. So you have to use the SNES controller with a pointer, which just...sucks. Especially in high intensity scenes, where you are frantically looking for hiding places or escape routes from Scissorman, all the while trying to not get cornered, the controls can really mess you up. Item selection and use is also difficult, making actually playing this game almost a chore.

Despite the simple style, I would argue this game looks really good. 

This is an adventure game, a Japanese game, and a horror game. All three of these genres are known to be  difficult not because of actual gameplay difficulty, but because of convoluted goals and just general hardness. Clock Tower is very convoluted. It'll take you several runs, inching your way along as you progress, probably finding several bad endings before finally making some headway. I'd personally say give it two or three goes just to experience it on a "naked" run, then use a guide. The game it still pretty intense and scary, even when you know what you are doing, but it is just so damned difficult to know what to do it's almost impossible to get a good ending without cheating. It doesn't ruin the experience, though, which is what matters.

The fan translation is a good one, though the story can still be convoluted. 

As stated, the sound design in this game is fantastic, and the graphics are good as well. There's something unnerving about seeing such horrific scenes playing out with retro SNES graphics, which works to the games advantage. As I've also said, there is next to no blood and gore in this game, but it still manges to be completely horrifying and unsettling. It just goes to show you don't have to pull a Saw and make your movies/games a gorefest all in the name of "horror." That is assuming you do it well, which Alan Wake tried and got really close, but unfortunately didn't quite make it. 

I really, really like Clock Tower: The First Fear. I liked it so much it inspired me in my sequel to my first horror game (Pitch Black) to incorporate a lot of Clock Tower's elements into the sequel (Pitch Black 2)

See any similarities? I drew that background in MSPaint, by the way. Be impressed. 

It has a few problems, but if you like horror games and want to see what the SNES offered, you really should check this game out. It's completely free, you'll just have to search for a ROM that's translated, so you really don't have anything to lose. 

Despite issues, I feel good giving this game four out of five stars. I could seriously argue that it is the scariest game I've ever played (though Silent Hill 2 & 3 put up an excellent fight), or at least it was scary and impactful when I played it almost ten years ago. I can see why they didn't import it over here (it isn't something the SNES audience would have boughten back in the day), but thanks to the interent you can still experience it. So go for it!