Clockwork Cleanup
(There is a fullscreen option in the in-game settings)
Goo creatures are running amok in the spell factory and its up to you and MAC (Magical Automatic Custodian) to stop them! Guide MAC through a set of five waves of creatures with a boss at the end of each wave. Choose rewards wisely to craft an unstoppable spell arsenal!
Clockwork Cleanup is an auto-battler where MAC's actions are defined by spell tiles placed in the central grid. All spell tiles need at least one element to function. Routing pipes are used to connect spell tiles to the required elemental source.
The elemental sources are located on the perimeter of the grid: Fire (red, left side), Water (blue, top side), Earth (green, right side), and Wind (light yellow, bottom side).
 | Routing tiles are used to route elemental energy from the source to the spell tiles. Straight and corner pipes are unlimited, but all other routing pipes are limited. T-pipes and +pipes are essential to increase the number of spell tiles you can power. |
 | Single-input spell tiles require only one element to activate. Spell tiles will animate when properly connected. |
 | Dual-input spell tiles must be connected to two elements to activate. Typically, the tile will need two different elements. |
  | Mod tiles are attached to spell tiles to modify their behavior in some way. By default, each spell tile can only support two mod plugs. |
Please pay attention to the in-game tooltips for details about tiles and enemies. There is also a glossary in the menu with more details.
Clockwork Cleanup is an enhanced version of Aetheric Twilight, a game I worked on for a game jam: https://dstears.itch.io/aetheric-twilight
Download
Install instructions
Download and unzip the file above, then run the exe. Windows may complain about the program being unsigned.
Comments
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Amazing game. I played on Steam first (coincidentally found this here today) and shared it with a few hundred people across Discord servers. Anyone reading this on itch should absolutely try the game if you have any interest in puzzles or autobattlers.
This is the power of a defense build, in this last fight I got about 560 armor/shield. This game is amazing.
Congrats! Defense builds can be quite powerful.
Played over on Steam and left my review there, I absolutely love this game!! The animation work for all of the tiles is wonderful, I appreciate the different visuals to match powered/unpowered states. Controls for tile placement and management are genuinely very intuitive, although I would've liked to be able to right click + drag to remove pipes in a similar style to pencil placement. I like how each element's spell tiles follow some general theme in terms of function, making each color represent a literal "element" of a good build; Adjusting for where my build was lacking felt so natural when you can plainly see which elements are less developed than others on the grid.
In terms of feedback, would it be possible to have tiles show base stats alongside their modded stats when a mod is applied? I found myself doing a good amount of shuffling with mods and flipping them on and off to see the impact they'd have on certain tiles. I'd also have loved if modded stats were reflected when mods are "attached" to tiles in your inventory, as it became somewhat difficult to individually experiment once my grid became very busy later in the run.
Thanks for playing! And thank you for the suggestions. Adding the ability to right click + drag to remove multiple tiles is a good idea and I can probably add that.
With respect to your mod suggestions, I'll have to do some investigation. I'm not sure how well my infrastructure would support those behaviors and I'd also need to make sure it is still intuitive to new players.
While it is not an elegant solution, if you want to experiment with your grid without messing it up, you can leverage how the autosave works. The game is only saved immediately after you pick a reward and when you press the Start button. This means you can mess around with your grid, quit to the main menu, then hit continue to restore the grid state.
Very cool game! I enjoyed it very much, although I don't think I used all available tools to the full extend. Nice art direction, pleasantly difficult and forces you to be creative in your decisions. Anyway, here's my mess of a grid.
Congratulations! And thanks for playing!