The Clockwork Citadel of Rademaeker

Behind copper gates ticks a city of cogs and steam, where automatons walk the streets and a tower clock is the heart of everything. Enormous brass gears turn overhead, and the whole citadel counts down the hour like one vast timepiece. Every month the structure reshapes itself, and today one gearwork trembles dangerously.

The old inventor Rademaeker, who built the citadel, has lost control: something has seized the central clockwork. His creations no longer obey, and the next reset threatens to rebuild the whole city around a new master, with your bones as parts. The automatons that once swept the streets now hunt.

You must navigate shifting corridors and turning halls, solve mechanical puzzles and ticking traps, and follow the trail to whoever or whatever hijacked the clock. Every gear set wrong speeds the countdown, and the architecture itself tries to crush you or build you in.

At the clockwork heart waits the Turning Brain, which hijacked the central clock and thinks in gears, fused with the mechanism and in command of every automaton in the city. Every tick brings the citadel closer to its will. Stop it in time and the citadel falls still and Rademaeker reclaims his creation; fail, and the clock strikes the full hour, and the citadel rebuilds itself into your tomb.