The clocktower seasons and the chapter 2 ball maze
The clocktower wants four season faces set against sun heights, and the usual failure is a mirrored arrangement rather than a bug; the chapter 2 ball maze is a real physics bug that a full reload of the level clears.
Two different problems get filed under "the game is broken" in the first days of Escape Academy 2: the clocktower season puzzle, which is not broken, and the chapter 2 ball maze, which is. Telling them apart is most of the work.
Both have threads on the Steam forum with developer replies or community corrections. Neither is solved by staring harder at the puzzle.
The clocktower, as reported
The report that matters is precise, and precision is why it can be answered. A player described setting the four season faces like this: winter at mid position with a low sun, spring at far right with a middle sun, fall at far left with a middle sun, and summer half right with a high sun - then noting that the hints appear to support this arrangement and it does not work.
The reply that follows says the arrangement is mirrored, with the correction placed behind the forum's spoiler tags. That is the whole answer, and it is worth unpacking because "mirrored" is the single most common failure mode in this puzzle.
| What the player set | What the reply indicates |
|---|---|
| Winter: mid position, low sun | Consistent with the hint |
| Spring: far right, middle sun | Consistent with the hint |
| Fall: far left, middle sun | Consistent with the hint |
| Summer: half right, high sun | This is the part that is mirrored |
Read the mechanism, not the hint text, and the reason becomes obvious: a season dial that pairs a face position with a sun height has two axes, and the hints describe each axis separately. Set the faces correctly and the suns mirrored, and every individual hint reads as satisfied while the arrangement is wrong.
What to do if you are stuck on it
- Check the pairing, not the individual values. For each season, is the sun height the one that belongs to that face - or the one belonging to the season opposite it?
- Reverse the horizontal order only. If your current setting is "far left / mid / half right" from fall to summer, try the reverse sequence before you touch the sun heights.
- Reset the puzzle before retrying. The clock face retains state between attempts, and a half-reset puzzle looks identical to a wrong one.
- Read the constellation clue twice. A separate puzzle in the clocktower - the word puzzle reported in French as spelling CHAMEAU against a one-humped dromedary - lives in the same tower, and people conflate the two when describing where they are stuck.
The chapter 2 ball maze, as reported
The ball maze bug is real, acknowledged, and has a workaround that works.
The original report is four words long plus one sentence: "physics didn't enable for the ball", fixed by closing and reopening the game. Three replies confirm the same thing. The most useful of them is from the developer: "Thanks for the report. We're tracking this one. Yeah, workaround is just to reload the level. Exit to menu and get back in." A second player confirms the same fix, and a third adds a trigger observation - pressing the level's reset button before the rat reaches a certain part of the maze reproduces it.
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Ball will not move or falls through geometry | Physics not initialised on level load | Exit to menu, reload the level |
| Bug reproduces immediately on reload | The reset button was pressed mid-run | Reload, then do not press reset before the rat advances |
| Ball behaves oddly but no fall-through | Possibly the same class of state bug | Full game restart, not just level reload |
The third row is inference, not a confirmed report. What is confirmed is the class of failure: level state that fails to initialise, and a reload that clears it.
Why these two get confused
Both are in chapter 2 territory, both involve machinery, and both produce the same player sentence: "I have the answer and the game will not accept it."
The distinction worth remembering:
- Physical state fails to initialise → the fix is a reload, and the symptom is geometry doing something impossible (a ball ignoring gravity, a floor you fall through).
- Puzzle state is set wrong → the fix is a rearrangement, and the symptom is the game responding normally to a wrong answer.
A ball that will not roll is a reload. A dial that will not click is a rearrangement. Applying the wrong fix to either one costs twenty minutes each time.
The general rule this build has taught players
In two days the forum has produced a consistent pattern: every genuine blocker reported so far is cleared by exiting to menu and reloading, and every "bugged puzzle" claim that got a reply turned out to be a wrong arrangement. The 6 November hotfix addressed exactly one class of state bug - quest items being deleted when you save and quit mid-quest - and the developer has said patching continues.
That means the correct sequence when you hit a wall is:
- Reload the level. Costs a minute, clears every initialisation bug.
- Re-read the clue and check for mirroring or reversal. Costs five minutes, clears the misread class.
- Only then treat it as a bug worth reporting, and copy the logs before you relaunch.
Next: the chemistry room and the ship, or the known issues page for everything else still open in this build.