Clockwork Cartel is a late-16-bit steampunk stealth-heist puzzle game about sneaking into automated factories and turning their own security systems against them.

You are not stronger than the factory.

You are cleverer than it.

In this playable Boilerworks prototype, you infiltrate a brass-and-steam industrial fortress full of patrol automatons, conveyors, pressure plates, gates, steam jets, gear trains, and hazardous machinery. Every room is a small mechanical puzzle box: observe the machine, freeze time, rewire the circuit, and escape before the factory grinds you down.

This first release is a five-room vertical slice focused on machine-verb puzzle design. It includes:

  • A Steam Hammer trap
  • A Piston Lift machine
  • A Pressure Regulator with LOW / NORMAL / HIGH states
  • A Rotating Gear Coupler that changes machine routing
  • A Boiler Bellows crate-shove puzzle
  • A final vault hatch escape
  • Keyboard controls, restart flow, HUD guidance, circuit diagrams, and low-overhead Web Audio cues

Controls:

  • Enter / Space: start from the title screen
  • WASD / Arrow keys: move
  • Hold Space: freeze time and inspect machinery
  • A / D or Left / Right: choose circuit links while a circuit panel is open
  • E / Enter: apply the selected circuit link or turn the Room 2 steam valve
  • R: restart the run

This is a browser prototype, not a finished full game. The goal is to prove the core fantasy: sneak through a hostile factory, read its moving parts, and make the machine betray itself.

Best played with a keyboard in a desktop browser.

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