At the start, Alyssa is innocent and comfortably secure with strong family bonds, so that she feels quite safe. It is at core a coming of age story, and the whole thing – from narrative to horror – works as metaphor for the development of Alyssa. It’s also what makes Clock Tower 3 an artful game. Subtly, the theme builds through the game, and to unpack where the horror atmosphere within the game comes from (because there are few instances of extreme bloodletting by the standard of horror games), it is this theme. It is designed to make you feel uncomfortable, however. This theme is only overt in a few isolated instances, so I don’t believe it would be picked up as the reason for the horror by many people (or critics, at the time). There is an atmosphere of sexuality that pervades the entirety of the Clock Tower 3 experience. Instead, she needs to run, and hide, and when she does so, you’re treated to a cut scene of her, cowering in a cupboard or behind a curtain, as the killer stalks back and forth in front of her hiding place.

This girl – Alyssa – has no weapons nor way to fight back. There you are in control of a young, vulnerable, 14 year old girl, decked out in a school uniform and physically average in every way, being stalked by a string of serial killers, many based on real-life murderers, and these villains are led by her grandfather, who has a genuinely incestuous interest in her. So too is Clock Tower 3 actually quite confronting. His films were dark and pummelling, and powerful and evocative as a result of that. Fukasaku was well regarded as a major figure in Japan’s fringe cinema movements a genuine transgressive in his approach to his work. His involvement should be seen as thematically significant, too. The game’s cut scenes were directed by none other than Kinji Fukasaku, the same legendary film maker that gave us Battle Royale (among plenty more). On the more superficial level, it’s a game that, at the time, was really ambitious in its production. Released to little fanfare on the PlayStation 2 and doomed to immediate obscurity from middling reviews, Clock Tower 3 is nonetheless a real work of art, and despite its commercial failure, I do hope Capcom releases it on a whim as a PS2 title on PlayStation 4, because it really does deserve a second look. Unless you’re right into ultra-niche horror games, and have been for a while, it is very unlikely that you’ve played – or even heard of – Clock Tower 3.

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