Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker is an added DLC that puts the players back in control of Zale and Valere. The two solstice warriors are confronted by their pirate friend Keenathan, who faces a conundrum, and this time it requires the help of the watchmaker. This woman has a rather awful skeleton hidden in her closet, or rather, her large clock displayed in her workshop.
Once beginning the DLC and meeting with her, she has Teak’s book explain a tragedy between the watchmaker and a monstrous necromancer who used her and cons her into using an accursed gear that completely infests a world she creates through this giant clock. This clock inhabited beings that all lived happily, which she would look over from her workshop.
She unleashed an unspeakable horror, essentially taking her soul and cloning it into a bizarro version of herself, letting loose and terrorizing this miniature world she created. Unfortunately, due to how magic and souls work in these realms, only Zale and Valere may enter and participate in this world. However, they make a new friend, a robot known as the artificer, who joins them in this circus-themed world.
Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker
Developer: Sabotage Studio
Publisher: Sabotage Studio
Platforms: Windows PC (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Price: $34.99 (free update with game)
Once the new adventure begins, right off the bat, the evil puppeteer sends you two little jester-like enemies that are very similar to Zorn and Thorn, the red and blue jesters that would assist Queen Brahne in the earlier parts of the game.
They may as well be the same characters. As the fight commences, you will quickly realize your powers as a solstice warrior are worthless and do nothing against them. The antagonists begin to play with poor Zale and Valerie and utterly destroy them, Bane-style, like in The Dark Knight Rises.
The powers of the solstice warriors have no use here. Shortly after, you and your friends are all imprisoned, and it’s now up to the Artificer to save the day, which you begin to take control of!
Once you take control of him, you regain all the essential exploration features of the base game. Graplou, wind armlet, and the usual climbing and shimmying around tight footwork all remain present in the exploration.
Puzzles have never been better. If you enjoyed the Zelda-like puzzle solving, then be excited to know that almost every screen of this game is packed with, along with some treasure chest discoveries as well. If there’s one thing Sea of Stars nails, it’s capturing the enjoyment of puzzle solving from way back during the SNES days of video games.
Throughout the DLC, Exploration between each carnival-like atmosphere is rewarding and an absolute joy to look at, in its SNES pixel glory. However, certain features begin to fall apart when it comes to some of the core value concepts of the DLC itself.
After doing some puzzle solving as the robot, you quickly regain control of Zale and Valeries, and this is when the walls begin to fall on the experience.
New powers are granted to them, and it seems all their old powers are no longer usable, essentially turning them into brand-new party members. New Combo techniques, new timing actions, and generally, a brand-new feeling of adventure.
This feels and sounds wonderful at first, but if you decide to leave the DLC area, all of your new powers go back to being what they were, PRE-DLC. Nothing is kept, ultimately making this DLC may as well be a standalone mini-game in its own right. However, if you go back into the DLC zone, everything will switch back to whatever it’s like in it.
Valere and Zale take on new classes that allow them to fight and survive in the clockwork world. Zale ditches his sword and becomes a fireball juggler of sorts, and Valere becomes an acrobat constantly doing handstands! Their special moves all respectively reflect this change as well, along with their completely reinvented combat styles.
The timing did feel much tighter on them, but also allowed for even more advanced timing inputs, which added a bit more flavor to executing them. I enjoyed using Zale’s new fireball barrage juggle. It kind of made me feel like I was doing Mario’s Fireball spell from Super Mario RPG on the SNES, but instead of spamming the button, there’s a rhythm to follow.
One thing that felt like a letdown, is that your level isn’t the same as what is during the base game, and, you don’t even have a numeric level at all in the DLC, instead your level is represented in Renown stars which seems to only go up to a cap of the single digits, far smaller than the base game’s level 30 cap.
The disappointment deepens here as you can’t even tinker with your stats with the bonus stat selection like in the base game. If there was any problem, I had that I hoped would be corrected in this DLC would be to add at least SOME level of customization, and instead, they managed to make that even worse here.
Without getting too much into the story, this is where the strength of the DLC shows its cards. Not only will you face up against the watchmaker’s evil aberration incarnated from her alongside herself, but also the protagonists themselves.
This causes them to learn more about who they are, as not a lot was given about them in the main game. Or at the very least, somewhat helping us see more of what Valere and Zale are, as their personalities were lacking.
This DLC feels like a means to correct some things that didn’t happen in the base game, which is always a welcome addition, but, in many ways, I feel like they went in the wrong direction in some cases. Typically, DLC that doesn’t supplement the progression of the base game never feels good.
A proper way to do DLC or side content should be something that gives you access to new gameplay features and makes it feel fresher when going about the game or adding further replay value.
Since everything in the DLC is completely separate from the base game and is taken away from you the second you step out of the DLC region, it feels superfluous. That being said, it’s a very unique concept of storytelling and deserves the time if you enjoyed the base game.
Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker was reviewed on PC using a code provided by Sabotage Studio. Additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy is here. Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker is now available for PC (via Steam), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
