TimeSplitters 4 by BlueCalx
Inputs
- MOVE : ARROWS
- STAND STILL / PASS TIME : T
- BREAK TIME : B
- RESTART LVL : R
- ESCAPE LVL : ESC
Instructions
Reach the exit.
But soon enough you will not be able to do it alone anymore.
So let me rephrase: Reach the exit with any of your timelines.
You will do so by recording inputs to create time loops. Record inputs for a loop by moving (arrows) and/or standing still (T) in the game until you used all five of your battery cells. Each battery cell having five energy (understand five inputs/turns).
A time rewind happens automatically at the end of the loop, after that you have to pass time (T) to watch your past self perform the recorded inputs by himself. While watching your past self you may break time (B) at any turn to desynchronize and record an additional loop by finishing the previous one differently.
Plan well as you will have one less energy per battery cell each time you desynchronize (your color gets darker).
Try not to get Stuck in a Loop! if so you may restart the level.
Unity, Aesprite, Tiled, FL Studio, Audacity (+ half-filled 20yo metallic water bottle)
Known bugs
- highlight of current energy bar during lost (black) energy turns is not working.
- energy bars red highlights goes from 4 to 0 instead of 5 to 1, which makes it display them all depleted when you actually have full current max energy available.
- breaking time on top of a button make the present self not activate it, therefore if your previous past self leaves it it will deactivate even if your present self has stayed on it. Note: none of the levels need this to be completed, they are all doable in this version 1.0.
If you're still confused
The game mechanics can be difficult to grasp and it terribly lacks a proper tutorial. If you have the patience try (re)-reading the pseudo tutorial above and experiment it in a level. We believe it might be worth it to take some minutes to figure them out, once past the understanding people seem quite happy with the levels solving so far (thank you very much for all the feedback!).
Here's an example of recorded inputs for all five loops which tries to cover all kind of possibles questions you might have after struggling a bit with the game first:
Ratings
| Overall | 887th | 3.438⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1048th | 3.123⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 217th | 3.89⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 637th | 3.774⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1220th | 3.068⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 592th | 3.41⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1037th | 3.171⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 106🗳️ | 241🗨️ |
Anywho, great game! I liked the aesthetic, and the stages are designed well.
The gameplay is really deep! It respect the theme really wonderfully, so props to that!
Also TimeSplitter 4 !
I rephrased the instructions to maximize clearness based on what people seem to be struggling with when discovering our game. Big thanks to @lanalux 's amazing twitch channel, after seeing her comment here I went and watched her yesterday's replay in which she tested our game, I could see what really needed to be clearer.
Nice job guys!
I agree with comments above mentioning that understanding mechanics is a bit hard at first, but once you get it - everything suddenly makes sense and solving levels starts feeling natural. It's like figuring out the plot of the Primer movie (btw, totally recommend watching), once you understand how it works you are starting to see the whole picture. All of it probably means that a simple in-game tutorial will solve the problem.
Bonus points for the music, altough simple, it works like a charm with your simple graphics.
Hoping for a post jam version, thanks for making this game!
@abvadabra Thats some great positive energy you're sending here. Thanks mate!
Its time to split!
Definitely going to finish the 2 last levels. Really great job there.
EDIT: I finished it ! Love hard games ^^
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767505473?t=5h42m46s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
On a side note, I saw you used Unity and Tiled. I'm curious as to why you went with Tiled over Unity's built-in tilemap stuff. I haven't used Tiled so if I'm missing out I'd like to know :P
@balance686 :
We used Tiled because the noob in the team (spoiler: me) didn't know much about unity's tilemap system at the beginning of the jam.
It is an extremely light weight and simple program which generates text and png save files, handy for git merges compared to accidentally messing around in the same unity scenes.
It allowed me to get started with designing the game mechanics and levels as an efficient back and forth process since the very start of the jam (using random icons from the web). Once we got a first version of the core game loop implemented and placeholder sprites designed I then started to try out the level designs in unity and polish directly there. But even then I would still go back to Tiled whenever I needed to make big changes because it was just so much faster to prototype there.
This game feels complete and not lacking in anything -- despite the minimalistic graphics style.
Playing felt good, and was inspiring. Great job!
Music is very fitting as well, created nice ambience but didn't get in the way. Graphics are obviously very basic, so not much to talk about here. However, I will talk about colors :). I think it would be somewhat better if the color differences between me and my new selves were more pronounced. I am, of course, not advertising creating a color circus here :wink: but some more pronounced variation.
The game indeed took a while to get a hang of, figure out the inner workings (like it wasn't immediately apparent that my clones skip the specific action where they have an empty bar - it became apparent once I looked at the image you provided :smile:). But after I got comfortable with the core concept, the puzzles were very enjoyable to solve. Well done, well done indeed!
But man, this game is extremely difficult :sweat_smile: Or at least, level 5 is extremely difficult, fun enough to keep me trying for about 30 minutes, but I never got past it.
Anyway, it's a good kind of difficulty, so I've no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the controls are unintuitive, and make the game really unintuitive to learn to play. I spent way too much time on level 1, just because I never realized I wait (T) while the previous timelines play out, but instead always just tried to break time (B) right at the start.
Obviously, it could use a tutorial level, just to explain the mechanics (or at the very least, tell the player step-by-step how to beat level 1, then let them take it from there). But I'd like to point my finger at the biggest problem: understanding the "T" control. It has two functions in two different contexts (while replaying it means "step forward", and while playing it means "wait"). So I have two different suggestions to try: I would either introduce W for "wait", or just remove the "wait" functionality completely, and remove the need to use it. Or, if I was even braver, I'd remove the "step forward" functionality and make the previous timelines start replaying one step per second automatically after rewinding!
Other than that, the game looks great and sounds great. I was listening to the music for about an hour (as long as I played) and didn't get bored.
Very nice interpretation of the theme as well.
Great job on this game! :)
I do have to say though, this game was on my "to play" list for a long time before
I actually tried it out because the schematic you posted made it look way more complicated for
me than it actually was in the end.
Also @tino particularly, thank you for helping a certain ld participant learn about
common netiquette. It was because of your courage I finally played this game!