Graphics: Lock’s Quest offers two drastically different visual styles. The dark, foreboding look of the game’s cut scenes is quickly replaced by bright, colorful, quasi-anime representations of the Kingdom. The cinematics effectively convey the danger and dread associated with the story, but they do tend to go on a bit longer than they should, and there’s no way to skip them. The biggest visual problem is the inability to rotate the camera, which makes placing defensive elements more frustrating that it should be, especially considering the limited amount of time you have to set up your walls and turrets. There’s nothing graphically groundbreaking here, but the lack of big-time bells and whistles doesn’t adversely impact the gameplay experience.

Interface: In a game such as this, an easy-to-navigate interface is crucial to a player’s success, and Lock’s Quest is filled with small problems that add up to mild frustration. In the Build phase, placing elements on the screen can sometimes be difficult. Not being able to change camera angles can make building walls a hit-or-miss affair, with gaps between structures left unfilled because you can’t see that there really is a gap to be filled. To scroll the lower-screen map, you have to use the D-pad on the DS’s face, which can cause a stability problem when you’re furiously tapping away with the stylus (you can scroll by dragging the stylus to the edges of the screen, but Lock goes wherever you tap, which can interrupt his journey to wherever you really want him to go). And moving Lock around can be trying as well; if you send him on a trip across the map, sometimes he stops halfway to his destination, forcing you to tap again to have him resume his journey.

Gameplay: Despite the interface problems, Lock’s Quest is amazingly addictive and fun to play. You spend the first 20 game days building defenses and protecting objectives, but then you switch to the offensive for a few days, manning a turret and beating back Clockwork baddies. As you progress, eventually you have to defeat boss characters against which only certain weapons are effective. It’s your job to keep trying new defensive configurations until you find the right one for each boss. Fortunately, if you fail in your current scenario, you can either go back to the beginning of the Battle phase and try a new strategy, rebuild your defenses and use a new approach, or go all the way back to the beginning of the sequence and work your way back with a totally new plan. It can be difficult, but it’s also very rewarding when you finally hit upon the combination of weapons and walls that puts down the boss and opens up the next part of the game. There is, however, one gameplay element that really sticks in my craw: you have to be within a certain range of dead Clockworks to harvest their Source, so if you’re busy battling a pesky knot of enemies at one end of the map while your turrets are carving them up on the other end, all of that Source goes to waste. Also, enemies still alive when time runs out are reduced to Source, but the game won’t let you harvest it before moving to the next scene. Lock’s Quest has a single multiplayer mode that requires both players to be in the same room (Internet play is not supported).

Sound FX: Audio effects are limited to footsteps, weapon sounds and the occasional agonizing cry from Lock as he succumbs (subtitles stand in for actual voice-over acting). The most useful of these is a chime that sounds with one minute, 30 seconds and 10 seconds remain in the Battle phases. As a whole, the sound effects are effective yet unremarkable.

Music: Composer David Franco’s score is a nice mixture of styles that adds to the atmosphere of each area in Lock’s Quest. From the synthesized battle music to the dark vocal arrangements that are found in some of the cut scenes, the score is the best kind of background music — you don’t notice it much as the game goes on, but you find yourself humming some of it long after you stop playing.

Intelligence: The AI enemies are single-minded in their attempts to achieve their goals, which many times works out well for you. More often than not, the Clockworks ignore gaping holes in walls and continue to bash away at them until the obstacles are destroyed. They are also easily distracted, and since your mission is always to survive until the timer expires, attacking them once and backing off can save you precious seconds. The Clockworks are never smarter than you are, but they have a mob mentality that can be tough to overcome.

Difficulty: Patience and careful thought go a long way to achieving success in Lock’s Quest. Source management is the most important part of the game. Spending too much in early battles can leave you with precious little to use later, when the number of enemies increases and the bosses start appearing. Fortunately, the majority of villains follow the same paths each time you replay a scenario, so once you discover what they are going to do, you can alter your plans to match. Just be prepared to replay some of the days, and even some whole sequences of days, multiple times until victory is achieved.

Overall: There’s a great deal about Lock’s Quest that could be improved, including the camera, character control, AI behavior and the player interface. But even with all of this against it, I could barely put it down. Every time I thought I was going to give up and move on, something happened that brought me back into it again. If you can put the game’s obvious problems out of your mind, you’ll end up with a fulfilling gaming experience that you’ll want to share with your friends.