Timemelters Review – A Time Unseen

Unless you really did your homework, you probably have no idea what to expect from Timemelters. When I agreed to this review, I saw the trailer and thought, “Okay, an action RPG/horde fighter where I use sorcery and there’s some time mechanic.” It’s a pleasure to report that this description falls entirely short. In fact, in drawing on my decades of gaming experience, I couldn’t think of a single other game that shared Timemelters’ model. It should come as a surprise to no one that this distinctive design wasn’t a mistake.

On the Dev’s website, they describe the design goal for their games:

We don’t settle with cloning games by simply changing the context or the visuals, we want to create something entirely new, with never before seen mechanics and game rules.

https://www.autoexec-games.com/

Created by Autoexec Games out of Montreal, Timemelters was developed by a very small team — only three are mentioned in the game’s opening credits. But what this tiny team has done is impressive, and I dare say that they accomplished their laudable goal with Timemelters. Are you curious yet? Good. Let’s talk about it.

Timemelters is described by the devs as a “strategy hero defense”, but you won’t really get a clear picture of what that means until you’ve played for an hour or so. The game’s introductory section is essentially an amuse-bouche that introduces the most basic mechanics, as well as the world, characters, and story. While fun, it’s basically a very long tutorial and story sequence.

Things really get going when you start your first real mission. You’ll be up against several dozen enemies — to defeat them, you’ve got a number of powers available. These powers are varied and have practical purposes; let’s look at the starting ones:

• Spirit Strike – Basic ranged magic attack.
• Spirit Blast – Blast back a group of enemies running at you.
• Infuse Spirit – Animate certain objects to fight with or support you the battlefield.
• Earth Spirit – An area of effect spell to stop enemies for a short time.
• Fire Spirit – Summon a fire guardian that hurls fireballs at enemies.
• Teleport – You can teleport (which is a real life saver).

The catch is that to use the more robust powers (the bottom four on the list), you have to have spirits, which are acquired by defeating certain enemies. But once you start fighting a group, you get mauled. So in the first actual mission, I had to single out some enemies that would give me spirits and defeat them, only for one enemy (or a dozen) to get too close and… kill me.

This is where the time aspect plays into the game. Upon dying, I restarted the mission — but with the newly acquired spirit power I collected from my previous life — and an “echo” of my previous self reenacted every action I had taken up to the point of my death. This is where the strategy gets interesting: I can play around the enemy movements that my echo causes with its actions. A giant group of enemies might chase my echo past a tree that I then cast Infuse Spirit on, resulting in the tree flinging them in the air and thinning out their numbers. Maybe I want to buy some time for my future echo, so I cast Earth Spirit to slow a group down.

There are many ways to play a level, and a plenitude of tools to use, but the best part is that it stays challenging. You will definitely fail, but it never feels unfair. There will be moments when you’re feverishly running from a group of enemies, only to realize that you’re on your last echo, and death means game over. Then you realize that you could’ve cast a teleport two echoes ago to reshape the whole battlefield.

After that second mission, my thought was, “Interesting, but it’s kinda lame that I already have all the powers.” I was very wrong. This is the point where the game changes dramatically: If you’re solo, the hoards of enemies become so big that your first set of powers can’t keep up. You need more devastating ones, which you acquire at a steady pace throughout the dozen or so missions. In coop, you still obtain more powers, but they’re limited (so you don’t sweep away your foes too easily).

It’s a testament to the uniqueness of Timemelters that I had to spend the first half of this review just describing the game’s mechanics. In reviews for other games, you can usually call out a genre, and 90% of people will understand what type of game you mean and what to expect. Yet, I haven’t even gotten to the fact that you can switch to a bird’s eye view of the battlefield and use your powers on enemies that are miles away to hinder them from killing a future echo. There’s honestly so much to this game’s systems and mechanics that it’s a difficult job outlining them all in a concise review.

What about the story? After all, the setting in which we’re using these powers and its characters is important. Unfortunately, this is the part of the game that I found lacking, but there is a caveat to my opinion. When you’re choosing to start a new game in the menu, the default option is the “Full Version”. I wrongly assumed that this was the entire game. The other option, called the “Extended Version”, is described as having more dialog and backstories, no doubt rounding out the story a fair bit.

Going back and playing the start of the extended version, I didn’t notice any new cutscenes or dialogue, so perhaps they come in later. That being said, the full version’s characters still didn’t have strong personalities or significant arcs. Their motivations and interactions felt generic, and the dialogue was flat. The main character acts bewildered in most of her dialogue and never seems to grasp what’s happening, even towards the end. The main story itself had some twists and turns, and some genuine highlights of moral ambiguity, but as a whole I never felt captured by it. This could’ve been because it’s a fairly short game (I finished it in just under ten hours), or due to the story biting off more than it can chew in terms of scope.

The delivery of most of the exposition was also poor. In between the missions or chapters, while the game was loading, it would give you a sheet of info about a character or topic. In this reviewer’s opinion, information of this kind is almost always better relayed through story beats, cutscenes, or dialogue. The limited voice acting was okay, even if it did jump around with accents, and the stylized map was a nice touch that breathed some life into the journey.

On the technical side of things, I didn’t have a single issue with performance. This is pretty astounding for a game that tinkers with such distinctive tools and mechanics. I played on Steam with a controller, and the interface felt intuitive. This is good news for console players as this game will be releasing for PS5 and Xbox Series S /X in summer, 2024. Another boon is that this game is a bargain ($20) for two people wanting to play together. At release, purchasing one copy will come with a friend pass, so you can play with a friend for free.

With the bases covered, I want to end this review by describing the feels of finishing a particularly hard mission (gamers that have finished a Dark Souls game will know what I’m talking about). There were actually quite a few missions where it felt like everything had to line up perfectly to pull it off. You would be down to your last echo, and have your route planned. As you teleport across the map, you’d see past echoes darting back and forth, using different powers to affect the battlefield. Then it all culminates in your last echo perfectly timing that last big spell you saved to finish off the horde. There aren’t many games that can give you that rush of excitement and glee when you win. This game does that. I actually fist pumped after finishing the final boss.

This review is based on a retail copy of the PC version of Timemelters provided by Autoexec Games.