Time looping in games is a well trodden trope but that doesn’t mean it can’t bring new ideas or executions to the games table. Time Turned is one such indie game that has snuck onto the Steam store recently that has taken me time to review because of its fiendish puzzle designs and exacting requirements for success. Whilst it dangles the ‘skip level’ button as a carrot, I desperately refused to bite it unless I was driven to distraction.
Time Turned sees you playing as an agent of time with a pocket watch that does two magical things. Firstly, it can create a clone of you, and secondly it can rewind time and start it over again allowing multiple versions of you to co-exist. Each level allows you only a certain amount of seconds rewind and either 1, 2 or 3 versions of yourself in play at any one time. They act like echoes, repeating the same move set but if the second clone raises a barrier or shoots a bullet – those things work across all realties and will stop the echo clones in their tracks. This is crucial to understand because so many later levels involve trying to pick apart the order of events you need to trigger and then time them nicely to make things work. Death is temporary though – rewinds can fix a multitude of sins for your current clone.
Levels start off quite gently though as you storm Dr. Ineptus’ lair. He pops up on TV screens taunting you every few levels like a Saturday morning cartoon crossed with a gay fashion icon but is largely absent from the majority of the game. Instead you are faced with increasingly complex single screen levels that require lots of things to be moved, pressed, or killed within the time limit to then reach the exit door before the watch hits zero. Early on this will involve moving stones to block turret guns, triggering a switch or two to open and close gates or doors or using clones to stand on pressure plates to allow progression. Levels then combine these things before adding in enemies that either chase the nearest clone to kill them or gun toting enemies that you need to kill first.
What seems straight forward often gets muddy fast when enemies are involved as each new clone may trigger new movements from the enemies as they fixate on the nearest one. Tactics to draw them away might fail and sometimes I felt I fudged the win more by accident than by skill. Where you do need to be skilled however is in timing. The pocket watch doesn’t leave you much time to dilly dally and so you’ll be counting aloud as you move three clones around to trigger switches in certain orders. Add in enemies and that’s where Time Turned became incredibly complicated for me. Part of this was my skill level. The other reason is that the controls – particularly the throwing mechanic – are inconsistent. Levels where you need to throw items across gaps to other clones became a chore and it was because I never really got a handle on the throwing. Everything else I could work with but I’d love to see some more finesse in that area in the future.
Time Turned also suffers a bit from GreyVision. The artwork is predominantly dark and grey, it struggles to standout. What I’d ask for gamers to do is to look beyond that and consider the mental and controller gymnastics required to complete some really tightly designed time loop puzzles instead. The puzzles are varied, changing and whilst not brain meltingly hard, they rely on good top down platforming skills to complete. If that sounds like your bag, know that this is what Time Turned excels at and therefore its worth your time.
Review copy provided by developer. Time Turned is out on Steam.
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