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Drag a gear from the tray onto an empty peg. Tap a gear on the board to send it back, or drag it somewhere else. When you think it is right, tap Wind: the spring turns the crank exactly as far as the button says, and every dial has to stop on its mark. Before winding, you can drag the crank's handle round by hand to watch where things go.
The first level walks you through all of this. You can play that lesson again, or read How to play, from Learn on the main menu or from Settings.
Two gears mesh when their teeth add up to the distance between their pegs. Pegs 32 apart take a 12 and a 20, or a 16 and a 16. If the teeth add up to more, the gears collide; if they add up to less, they don't touch. The number under each gear in the tray is its teeth.
Red means the machine is jammed: a gear covers another peg, it collides with a gear next to it, a loop of gears is trying to turn against itself, or a ratchet or a worm is being turned the one way it cannot go. Move or remove the red gear and Wind works again.
That is on purpose. When a machine runs down and a dial is off its mark, it rewinds by itself after a moment so you can change something and try again. Nothing is lost, and there are no lives.
From the fifth floor, Milo walks through the machine while it runs, and a crusher is only safe while its dial is lit. It is a timing puzzle as much as a gear one: gear the crusher's dial so it is lit when Milo gets there, usually by slowing it down.
Tap the lightbulb. The first hint says which dial is off and by how much. Ask again and it picks out which peg to change. Ask a third time and it puts the right gear there for you. Hints start from what you have already built, so they move you on from where you are.
A level solved with a hint still counts, and can still earn its first two stars. On a level without a challenge, the third star is for solving it without a hint.
One for solving the level, one for using no more brass than the cheapest solution (the par shown under your brass), and one for the level's challenge, such as using fewer gears or leaving a size in the tray. Stars are only ever gained: a later, worse solve never takes one away.
Many levels can be solved more than one way. Each different way you find is a build, and the level cards show how many you have found out of how many there are. Every total was counted by the same search that proves the level can be solved.
A floor opens when two thirds of the floor below are solved. Inside a floor, a level opens when the one before it is solved, but you can always leave up to two levels unsolved and go on, so one hard level never stops you. The foundry opens with the ninth floor.
Hats, coats and gear metals in the wardrobe open with stars and builds found. Nothing in Escapement is for sale.
At midnight UTC, so it changes at the same moment everywhere, and everyone gets the same machine that day. It is generated on your device from the date; nothing is downloaded.
No. Escapement has no networking code at all: no accounts, no leaderboards, no sign-in. The daily machine and the foundry's machines are made on your device, so everything works in airplane mode.
Yes. Sound and Haptics each have a switch in Settings, on the main menu. Settings can also show every part's tip again.
Escapement is one app for iPhone and iPad, in landscape on both, and runs on iOS 17 or later. It is not offered on the Mac or on Apple Vision Pro.
Progress is a file in the app's own container, so deleting the app deletes it. A device backup that included Escapement restores it with the app; without one there is no copy anywhere for us to give back, because nothing is ever sent off the device.
If something is broken, tell us what device you are on, which level you were playing (its number is at the top left, like 4-12), and what happened. If a level seems impossible, say which one: every level has been proved solvable, so either there is a way you haven't seen yet or we have a bug to find.
Questions, bugs, or a machine that won't come right?
support@pablin.me