—————Entry description————–
Clock is a chill and therapeutic interactive experience that dives into the whole concept of time, exploring how we perceive it and deal with feeling disconnected as we grow up. One morning, 27-year-old Joanna notices something weird: the clock in her bathroom is ticking way too loudly. She finally takes a moment to really look at herself in the mirror. As the steam clears, her mirror turns into a ‘life clock,’ letting her go back and revisit her past.

Join Joanna as she relives key moments through interactive scenes—like competing in a drawing contest, immersing herself in high school music moments, making college decisions, figuring out signal processing in engineering class, and stressing over job hunting. These memories make Joanna rethink what time means to her—whether it’s the focused moments while drawing, the peaceful and joyful times with music, the anxiety and uncertainty before big decisions, or the delayed realizations of life’s lessons. It is all about time, with no good or bad.

This journey is a conversation with herself, a series of memories that help Joanna understand and accept her past. As the clock starts ticking again, she knows what her next steps are.

—————From author—————
Chasing the “so-called” social clock, I found myself profoundly out of tune with time—constantly anxious about the future, unable to live in the moment, and disconnected from my past self. Clock captures my journey of looking back at memories to find connections between the past, present, and future, and to discover ways to befriend time. I hope this introspective interactive experience will resonate with players and inspire them to find their own relationship to time. The experience features five interactive vignettes that allow players to re-experience memories: attending a drawing competition, reliving high school music moments, making college decisions, contemplating time in an engineering class on signal processing, and navigating the anxieties of job hunting. Each vignette helps me reflect on time and find personal ways to reconcile with it—whether it’s being “in the zone” when drawing, experiencing serendipitous moments in everyday life, accepting life’s anxious and tense parts, or appreciating the delayed realizations of experiences. In creating Clock, I integrated the interconnected concepts of music and time. My background in producing music and programming audio effects has given me unique insights into time’s representation in music and the manipulation of audio signals across time and frequency domains. This has deepened my understanding of how time is embodied in music and sound. “Delay,” a vignette in the game, illustrates how people and events often impact us with delayed effects, enriching and adding layers to our existence. Similarly, in the music production of Clock, I assigned different melodies to various instruments to symbolize memories at different stages—some peaceful, some anxious, some dissonant. Together, they form a vivid, deep song, mirroring my realization that our experiences with time, whether joyful or tense, enhance the richness of our life’s symphony.

————-play guidance————–
In case there is any confusion during gameplay, there is a ‘How to Play’ guide that provides a quick way to navigate the interactive narrative experience: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qyy-q5-RTqKX-cVLWwUL0o8LR3cBb_bH/view?usp=sharing