Clockwork Ambrosia: 14 Years in the Making and Finally Here

Fourteen years.

Nathan Hiemenz started building Clockwork Ambrosia in 2011. Fresh out of DigiPen. A small studio called Realmsoft in Austin, Texas. One game. One vision. A steampunk Metroidvania where the weapons are the progression system. Not health bar upgrades. Not incremental stat boosts. Actual weapon behavior changes that fundamentally alter how you fight.

Fourteen years later, it's finally here. Clockwork Ambrosia launched today on Steam. And the weapon system that Hiemenz has been refining since before most indie games on the market existed is exactly as wild as he promised.

The Weapons Are the Game

Most Metroidvanias give you a new ability every few hours. Double jump. Dash. Wall climb. You know the formula. Clockwork Ambrosia does that too. But the real progression is in what you do to your guns.

Six weapons. Over 150 modifications. Each mod doesn't just add damage or fire rate. It changes how the weapon behaves at a fundamental level. Add a mod that fires extra rounds. Then add one that splits projectiles. Then add one that makes split projectiles bounce. Suddenly your basic revolver is a screen-filling chaos machine that ricochets off every surface in the room.

Loot Level Chill's reviewer described making a revolver that no longer fired in a straight line. Bouncing bullets. Total chaos. Not a good build by any stretch. But so fun they refused to swap it out for something better. That's the energy this system is built on. It's not about optimization. It's about experimentation. About building something absurd and seeing if it works.

The system takes a while to open up. That's the one consistent criticism across reviews. The first couple of hours play it safe. Standard shots. Basic mods. The craziness doesn't fully kick in until you've explored enough to find the mods that break the rules. If you're the type of player who bounces off games in the first hour, Clockwork Ambrosia is asking you to trust it. The payoff is there. It just takes time to arrive.

Classic Metroidvania Done Right

Beyond the weapon system, Clockwork Ambrosia is a love letter to the GBA-era Metroidvanias that defined the genre. You play as Iris, an airship engineer stranded on the island of Aspida after getting shot down by a mechanical dragon. The population has vanished. Hostile machines have taken over. Something went wrong here and you're piecing together what.

The map design goes back to basics in the best way. Square rooms. A clean grid layout. No confusing overlapping corridors or rooms shaped like abstract art. You can actually read the map and understand where you are and where you haven't been. In a genre that's gotten increasingly complicated with its world design, that simplicity is refreshing.

The pixel art is gorgeous. Bright, detailed environments that range from overgrown mushroom forests to sky cities above the clouds to sunken underwater ruins. The soundtrack is equally strong. Catchy, varied, and perfectly matched to each biome. For a game that's been in development since 2011, the visual and audio polish suggests a team that spent those years refining rather than rushing.

What It Gets Right and What It Doesn't

The weapon modding is the clear highlight. When the system opens up and you start combining mods that interact in unexpected ways, the combat becomes something genuinely unique in the Metroidvania space. Nobody else is doing weapon customization at this depth in a 2D platformer.

The exploration is satisfying. The art is beautiful. The progression loop of finding new mods and immediately wanting to test them keeps you pushing into new areas.

But weapon switching is clunky. Two shoulder buttons that swap weapons in different ways (one temporarily when held, one permanently) create confusion in the middle of combat. The controls take adjustment. And the death penalty stings. Lose all your retries and you're back at the last save point, losing anything you collected since then. For a game built around exploration and discovery, losing a hard-earned mod because you died one room before a save point is genuinely frustrating.

These aren't dealbreakers. But they're worth knowing before you buy.

Fourteen Years of Selfishly Made

Nathan Hiemenz started Realmsoft in 2011 because he wanted to make a Metroidvania where creativity was the core of the experience. Not because a market analysis told him the genre was profitable. Not because a publisher asked for a pitch. Because he wanted to play a game that didn't exist yet.

He brought on pixel artist Maciej Kuczynski. Ex-DigiPen classmate Michael Betts. Game designer Ian Clark joined full-time in 2016. A small team. One game. Fourteen years.

That's "Selfishly Made" on a timeline that would make most people quit. Most studios don't survive fourteen months, let alone fourteen years on a single project. The fact that Clockwork Ambrosia launched at all is an achievement. The fact that it launched with a weapon system this creative, art this polished, and a world this detailed makes it something worth celebrating.

Clockwork Ambrosia is out now on Steam. If you like Metroidvanias at all, the demo is still live. Go try it. Let the weapons do the convincing.