Alex The Tinker - The Sunken Observatory

A small shop. A whole harbour.

You’re a trained instrument repairer opening your first shop in Brinewick. The council lowers the rent in exchange for helping local residents. Then Mira brings a salt-worn ferry lantern to your bench.

Inspect the mechanism, find the fault, fit the right part, and test what you restored. Each repair has a different problem to solve.

Mira’s lantern reveals a hidden harbour map.

Soon the objects on your workbench become the tools for a journey across the water, toward an observatory Brinewick thought it had lost.

Repair. Test. Discover.

Start with a lantern, a tide compass and a star projector. One needs a fresh lens; another has a salt-jammed pivot; the next asks you to bring a pattern into focus. Each object has its own fault.

Try your fix and watch it respond. The lantern throws a map, the compass settles on a safe route, and the projector reveals when that route can be crossed. What you repair becomes something you can use.

Return finished objects to the neighbours who brought them. You may see them in use again—or find a small thank-you waiting in your workshop.

The people at your counter

Mira knows the ferry routes. Arin, the retired instrument keeper, knows the old mechanisms. Sela wants her star projector working for the guests at her inn. They bring you objects that matter to them—and their stories continue after each handover.

In the full adventure, neighbors bring smaller problems too: a warming box that scorches bread, a mechanical seabird that walks backwards, a garden pump that lets salt water in. Not every job is a key to the mystery. Sometimes making someone’s day better is enough.

Some customers leave a thank-you gift. Choose a place for it in the workshop and let the room grow with the town.

Beyond the workbench

One repair shows a place. The next finds a safe route. The third reveals when it can be crossed. The lantern, compass and projector become tools for a boat journey with Mira and Arin.

Beyond the harbour lies an old service landing and an observatory built to read stars and tides. Explore its weathered rooms, bring its instruments back into use, and learn why the old charts no longer fit the water outside.

The full adventure continues beyond the free demo’s first three repairs.

Inside the old observatory

Past the service landing, Alex works through damp stone rooms and long-idle machinery. The instruments you repaired at home give the old observatory a way to answer the changing harbour.

Play at your pace

Choose dialogue text size, show complete lines immediately, reduce automatic camera motion and keep contextual repair hints visible. Adjust music, effects and harbour ambience separately. Save and Continue let you take a break between repairs.

The current build has text and interface support for 15 languages. These are first-pass translations, with native-language editorial review still in progress.

Play the demo. Follow the full adventure.

Play the free Windows or Mac demo at AlexTheTinker.com. It includes the ferry lantern, tide compass and star projector, and ends before the observatory expedition. No email is needed to download.

Help bring Alex’s full adventure to life. Get notified when crowdfunding launches. Follow this Gamefound project or sign up for a launch email on the website. The demo stays a separate, free download.

Crowdfunding will help complete more distinct repairs, the neighbors' stories, the observatory journey, music and sound, language review and playtesting. Coming soon on Steam.