Keeping Time

Every watch in Tick Again runs on a model of a real movement: wheels with tooth counts, a balance that swings at its own rate, a mainspring that runs down. Nothing on the bench is an animation of a watch; it is a watch, worked out in Swift, and the game is what you can do to it. Seven articles on how that model is built, from the gear train to the faults a watchmaker finds, each with the code that does it and the tests that hold it to the real thing.

01 One Turn an Hour C1’s gear train from barrel to escape wheel, why the model starts from the minute hand, and the test that catches a wheel cut one tooth short. September 19, 2026 02 Half a Tooth a Beat The balance as a sine, the twelve milliseconds a beat when the lever touches it, and a train that stands perfectly still in between. September 21, 2026 03 Three Sounds in Every Tick Unlock, impulse and drop, placed from the escapement’s own timing, rung on resonators, and started on the exact audio sample. September 23, 2026 04 Reading the Timegrapher Rate as a slope, beat error as a gap between two lines, and amplitude read backwards from the width of a tick. September 25, 2026 05 Seventeen and a Half Turns From crown to ratchet to mainspring, forty-two hours of reserve, and why a watch stops with spring still in it. September 27, 2026 06 The Order a Movement Comes Apart An order of disassembly that is written nowhere, falling out of each part’s outline and height, and run backwards to put it together. September 29, 2026 07 Faults as Physics A watch’s rate term by term, faults that change the model rather than flag it, and what oil costs a balance. September 30, 2026