To be perfectly honest, I’d completely forgotten about Clockwork Revolution, a distinctly BioShock Infinite-looking first-person immersive sim revealed by inXile Entertainment in June 2023. In my defense, it’s been quite some time since we last heard about it, but the studio recently reminded followers that it’s happening in a most unusual way.
The reminder was prompted by a user on Twitter, who after inXile tweeted about the apparent lawlessness of Leap Day—February 29, which as the old children’s rhyme tells us, only happens once in four—took the opportunity to ask for an update on the state of the game. InXile, somewhat surprisingly, responded. With bread.
(Image credit: inXile Entertainment (Twitter))
Why bread? What does it mean? How is bread contextualized within the norms of Steampunk? The sharper minds at GamesRadar puzzled it out: It’s not bread but breadcrumbs, the time-honored metaphor for a trail of small clues, slowly but surely leading to the solution of a mystery great or small.
It’s a little confusing, yes, but one thing’s for sure: Bread in videogames sure has come a long way over the years.
Unfortunately, this particular trail of breadcrumbs was very short—just that single tweet—and led to nothing more interesting than a gentle reminder that, yes, Clockwork Revolution is still happening. Which is probably not the worst idea given that, as I said, I’d completely forgotten about it. I’m going to just assume that I’m not alone in that regard.
It is worth noting, however, that this is not the only bread-adjacent bit of marketing for Clockwork Revolution. A couple weeks ago the studio dropped a “masters of marketing” video featuring two very large pieces of risen dough:
There’s also this insight into inXile’s creative process from December 2023, which as far as I can tell has no connection to bread, but since we’re here anyway we might as well take a moment to say thank you to the toilet kazoo:
Bottom line: I’m not sure what’s going on at inXile these days, but it’s still working on Clockwork Revolution and that’s good enough for me. The BioShock Infinite vibe is impossible to miss, but project director Chad Moore said a few weeks after it was revealed that Clockwork Revolution is really “the love child of [Arcanum] and [Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines],” and you better believe that’s a game I want to play. (And Moore should know: he worked on both those games.)
For the record, Clockwork Revolution doesn’t have a release date at this point, but it’s available for wishlisting on Steam.
