You would think Sabotage Studio has a sea of titles under its belt, considering how polished Sea of Stars was upon release in 2023. Fans were greeted with beautiful pixel artwork wrapped in an epic storyline containing iconic characters and enthralling music. In 2024, Sabotage wasn’t finished. Sabotage uncorked the Dawn of the Equinox update in Sea of Stars, which improved upon combat, giving players quality of life updates and calming the state of the Sea of Stars.
In 2025, Sabotage Studio showed another trick up its sleeve with Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker. Like the Dawn of the Equinox update, Throes of the Watchmaker adds to the base Sea of Stars experience, but this time as a full-on storyline expansion. This time Sea of Stars explores the background of the cast’s enigmatic Watchmaker. Throes of the Watchmaker staples another leg to the Solstice heroes’ journey without feeling like an artificial lengthening.
Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker adds more of what players loved in the base game: more stories, hilarious dialogue, music, peak-designed enemies, and challenging puzzles have been thrown into the sea. Aside from more Sea of Stars, the best part is the price of this premium experience is included with your previous purchase of admission.
First off, Sea of Stars smartly foreshadowed Throes of the Watchmaker in a storyline thread where the Sky Council must offer favour to the player’s party of heroes. This grants access to the Sea of Stars. In what I remember as a throwaway line/scene, the council of Giants regard Keenathan (the crew’s resident Wind Mage) oddly when he introduces himself as Keenathan, but ultimately (without the DLC) the Council drops the issue (basically saying “my bad”).
“Even if you’re maxed out from the base game, Throes of the Watchmaker brings a higher difficulty than the base title, and Sea of Stars veterans may be signaling SOS by last call.”
This rolls out the red carpet for the events of Throes of the Watchmaker, incorporating this puzzling scene of the Council and Keenathan, to the start of the expansion questline. The Council will follow up with your crew after the occurrence with a startling revelation: Keenathan isn’t his name. This revelation hurts the Wind Mage to the point of literal cascading tears until the travelling Historian, Teaks, comes up with a plan to enlist the Watchmaker’s help in claiming Keenathan’s chosen identity.
To get to the Watchmaker hastily, the party is introduced to a new party member aboard the Vespertine who will help during the entire span of the DLC content, the Artificier (who goes by Arty). Arty can be met during Sea of Stars, but Throes of the Watchmaker promotes him to party member. Arty is immediately classified with schizoid tendencies (having conversations with itself on more than one occasion) and brings an element of Chrono Trigger’s Robo to Sea of Stars. Arty is a robot with deep human characterization, resembling a fusion of Futurama’s Calculon and a giant frog that is instantly likable. Sea of Stars knows how to add to the party!
It turns out the enigmatic Watchmaker (who is a big deal in Sea of Stars, being the architect of the Clockwork Castle and tabletop pastime, Wheels) is an Ovate, a craftsman on par with the architects of the world. Enlisting her help is the goal in Throes of the Watchmaker—to return Keenathan’s name. A cutscene follows (avoiding spoilers) detailing more of the Watchmaker’s backstory and why they oppose the base title’s big bad, the Fleshmancer. This ultimately sets up the events of Throes of the Watchmaker, against a dark Puppeteer in the visage of the Watchmaker.
The Watchmaker tasks the Solstice Warriors with entering her creation, the byte-sized town of Horloge (which lives inside a giant clock). Using the Watchmaker’s creation, the Dialocus, the Solstice Warriors can assume smaller forms and explore Horloge.
The Dialocus isn’t just used to enter Horloge, it is used within Horloge as well, and it serves as Zale and Valere’s main key item of exploration within Horloge’s circuitry. Sea of Stars pulled out all the stops to bring Horloge to life, including puzzles reminiscent of Camelot’s 2001 RPG, Golden Sun.
The rules of the world are thrown into question when a tag team duo of literal clowns, Pif & Pouf dispatch our fully souped-up heroes (the DLC can be played after the events of the main questline) with ease. This serves as the first lesson of Throes of the Watchmaker: this is a different Sea of Stars experience. Even if you’re maxed out from the base game, Throes of the Watchmaker brings a higher difficulty than the base title, and Sea of Stars veterans may be signaling SOS by last call.
“Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker adds more of what players loved in the base game: more stories, hilarious dialogue, music, peak-designed enemies, and challenging puzzles have been thrown into the sea.”
Although it’s free, Sabotage Studio has thrown their entire ethos of Sea of Stars behind Throes of the Watchmaker. Every design screams quality, and the team even brought new and equally excellent sound design to the equation for the expansion. Lead Composer Eric Brown returns in a carnival music fury alongside Yasunori Matsuda (Chrono Trigger’s composer) to compose yet another complete soundtrack that encapsulates the entire experience from beginning to end. Throes of the Watchmaker sounds good.
After being forced to don new classes (Acrobat for Valere, Juggler for Zale) it’s clear Sabotage went back to the drawing board with Horloge. Currency is reduced to carnival tokens, and our heroes cannot wield their endgame equipment, forcing the player to readapt their playstyle (that could’ve devolved since becoming super-powerful). Upon entering and seeing the new enemy fare, Throes of the Watchmaker feels like you’re playing a brand-new Sea of Stars adventure from scratch.
Somehow, Throes of the Watchmaker looks even better than it sounds. Valere is standing on her hands in fights (her new Acrobat talents) and Zale is juggling all fight long. Basic attacks are stylishly designed, and team up attacks hilariously deploy carnival tricks to deal damage to foes. One such team-up attack has Arty firing Valere and Zale out of a cannon, then using a trampoline to score extra hits against adversaries.
Valere can utilize pole-vaulting to assault enemies, and Zale deploys fire-breathing to hurt evil carnival goers. Enemies maintain fun designs (one enemy design looks like the flower children would shoot water at to win a prize in a basic carnival game); they are anything but friendly. Enemies are brutal in the mechanical Horloge.
“If nothing else Throes of the Watchmaker has proven two things: more Sea of Stars is always a good thing, and any excuse to jump back in is a good one.”
Aside from the friendly-looking flower (that heals its allies), another enemy type sees a fearsome screw-wielding enemy yell “FULL POWER!” and come at you with three pumps of their baseball bat with cog-metal-barrel-wrapping (think barbed wire, but a metal cog instead). After three check swings, the enemy pops you with a fast jab, throwing off any chance of developing timing to defend. While turn-based RPG fanatics (like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fans) may feel right at home, these enemies pull no punches and are some of the hardest to figure out in Sea of Stars. These curveballs make Throes of the Watchmaker time well spent, breathing new life into the Sea of Stars.
Throes of the Watchmaker’s first boss fight pitted me against a Crazy Train with less Ozzy Osbourne. This entire fight felt like I’ve been here before (echoes of the Doomtrain from Final Fantasy VI). The train is hard to read and uses techniques that are even harder to strategize against (not to mention an instant-kill shot). After a sweaty affair, the mustachioed train meets its end. Let’s just say Sea of Stars is killer with its easter eggs (and locomotive suplex-ing).
Sea of Stars: Throes of the Watchmaker is phenomenal. Sabotage Studio said ‘hold my drink’ after Dawn of the Equinox, and proceeded to deploy another 6-8 hour adventure onto fans that is on par with the base game. Sabotage Studio proves that they ‘still got it’ when it comes to impeccable level design and puzzle crafting, with very smart existing traversal mechanics. On top of that, hilarious antics ensue (without spoilers, the Watchmaker isn’t the only one who gets an evil twin) on top of top-tier writing that can’t help but tug on the player’s heartstrings during its runtime.
Sabotage Studios treated Throes of the Watchmaker like the original release, polishing each enemy and every puzzle in Horloge to be up to/past the standard of the base experience. Everything down to fully animated cutscenes has been added to the experience, making Throes of the Watchmaker feel like a truly premium experience, but somehow, without any extra cost. If nothing else Throes of the Watchmaker has proven two things: more Sea of Stars is always a good thing, and any excuse to jump back in is a good one.
