Tick Again
Open, mend and hear it run
$4.99
New: the drawer Tomás kept locked. Six more watches, among them an English fusee wound with a key and a cylinder watch with no fork. Open the back and mend them.
A drawer of watches nobody came back for, and a bench to mend them on.
You inherit the shut watch shop of Tomás Arroyo in Quito's old town, and with it twelve
repairs left unclaimed: a pocket watch that stopped the night its owner died, a railroad
watch that gains minutes an hour, a nurse's fob watch with its dial printed upside down.
Each comes in its envelope, with what its owner said and what Tomás wrote about it.
Every watch is a real mechanism, simulated part by part.
Open the case at its lip with the case knife. Let the mainspring down with a tap on the
click. Back the screws out by circling them with the screwdriver, and lift the parts away
with the tweezers into the tray, in the order the movement itself allows — the balance
before the pallet c**k, the ratchet before the barrel bridge, the cannon pinion before the
centre wheel. Nothing is faked: the parts cover each other exactly as their real shapes and
heights do, and a part that will not come off tells you what is holding it.
Find the fault by its real symptom. A broken mainspring lets the crown turn and turn with
nothing catching. A rusted click spring lets the crown spin back. A loose cannon pinion
leaves the hands standing while the train runs. A magnetized hairspring gains three minutes
an hour. Old oil at the balance stops the watch face down.
Then put it right, and put it back together: clean the parts, oil every jewel with the oil it
takes — fine for the fast pivots, heavier for the slow ones, pallet stone oil on the exit
stone, grease on the keyless works — drive the screws home, case it up, and regulate it on
the timegrapher until the trace lies flat.
Six calibers, built to their real designs: a Swiss lever pocket movement, an American
railroad full plate that is lever-set, a Roskopf pin-lever with no jewels at all, a small
wrist caliber, a hi-beat automatic with a day and date in English and Spanish, and a
column-wheel chronograph.
Every gear has its real tooth count, and the beat rate follows from them. The tick you hear
is the escapement's three sounds — unlock, impulse, drop — placed from the simulation, so a
watch out of beat limps audibly, and a fast one climbs the timegrapher's trace.
The repaired watches go on the shelf, still running in real time on their own mainsprings.
Wind one, set it, open its back to see the movement you rebuilt. Some go home to the family
that left them, and leave a letter behind.
One purchase, everything in it: iPhone and iPad, all twelve watches, every free update. No
ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts, no tracking, and nothing leaves your device. Your
shelf follows you between iPhone and iPad through iCloud.
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The bottom drawer, which Tomás kept locked: six more watches, and two new calibers.
The Key and Watch Paper are English fusee watches in silver pair cases, wound and set with a key. A chain off the fusee keeps the balance swinging as wide on the last day as on the first. One of them answers who M. and J. were.
Nine Ligne is a schoolteacher's pendant watch with a cylinder escapement: no pallet fork, two sounds to a tick, and a swing that lives on its oil.
Flyback is a pilot's chronograph whose reset works while it runs. Up and Down is a railroad watch that shows on its dial how much wind is left. And the 3:52 comes back.
The developer, Pablo Miranda, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
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Information
- Seller
- Pablo Miranda
- Size
- 4.7 MB
- Category
- Simulation
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Pablo Miranda
