Comments on: Five Awesome Games About Time Manipulation

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:23:27 +0000

@Seth Brute Force :)

By: Seth

Seth — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:52:47 +0000

This so funny. I just made a post on the Unity script forum about time manipulation. I even mentioned Time Donkey in fact. Any chance you guys will share some of your technical tricks after it’s released?

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=29300

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:16:18 +0000

@Scarybug: Yeah, totally. I get exactly why you did it and it *is* unique. I just felt like it was holding the game back, forcing me to do things that weren’t as awesome as other things in the game. Perhaps you could have the abandoned robots fade out after a few seconds, like Marty’s relatives in the photograph in Back to the Future :).

Also, you might want to user test the assumption that having inert robots feels inauthentic. We’re doing that in Time Donkey and it’s become one of the core mechanics – they become platforms hanging in space. We’re allowing the player to start a new replay at anytime from anywhere, though, which would break most of your game.

Thanks for stopping by btw; I realize it’s not fun to have your design critiqued internets-anonymously. Drop me an email, I’ll send you an in-progress Time Donkey and you can rip it to shreds :).

-sswink at flashbangstudios.com

By: Velvety

Velvety — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:02:01 +0000

The theme of Time Donkey immediately reminded me of Braid. And that’s a good thing because Braid is one of the most innovative and fun games I’ve played in the last couple of years. I’m looking forward to Time Donkey because of that :)

By: Noyb

Noyb — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:13:45 +0000

I know all the time manipulation is prescripted, but I really love Day of the Tentacle and Time Gentlemen, Please.

By: Scarybug Games

Scarybug Games — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:48:03 +0000

Oh yeah? well I disagree with YOUR design constraints ;P

Seriously though, if/when we get a publisher signed for a console/portable version of Chronotron, we’re planning on exploring some of the suggestions you made. The Paradox constraint was deliberate though. It came from not really knowing what to make the robots do if you changed the past to make them unable to get back. When they run out of input to replay, they would just sit there, which felt inauthentic. I experimented with not requiring you to get past selves home if you got into the machine before them, but that felt arbitrary and made some of the puzzles trivial.

Multiple portals is something that _would_ have benefited the game. I think a mode that let you take your time machine ability with you would be interesting, but ultimately I wanted to focus on a single core mechanic, and I think the paradox system is what makes the game unique among time-travel games.

By: jayisgames

jayisgames — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:44:39 +0000

We saw several excellent examples of time manipulation games during our “Replay” themed game competition in Summer 2007, which predates many of your examples here.

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2007/06/game_design_competition_3.php

Check out:
Timebot
Time Raider
Rerun
Super Earth Defense Game!

By: soad667

soad667 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:05:25 +0000

Hehe, Chronotron was the first thing that came to my mind when i saw the Time Donkey prototype back then. ;)

From the rest, i had no idea about DefeatMe. I’ll make sure to check it right now. Cursor10’s evil twin? It must be at least interesting. ;)