When imagining traveling through time, it’s not just about ending up in a different era, it’s often about experiencing a different place and way of life. Untimed takes the reader from modern day Philadelphia to early 18th-century London, 19th-century France, and 20th-century China. The bulk of the story takes place in that London setting and presents the city from the view of young street thieves. Although the characters Charlie meets veer a bit on the outlandish side, the setting itself is vividly painted as dirty and seedy. War-torn Europe in the early 1800′s is brought to life through Gavin’s depiction of the anticipation of battle and the carnage inflicted upon its participants. Without giving too much away, our hero even gets a look at a skewed version of the present when a few historical choices go awry. Gavin certainly paints a picture of the past that makes the reader share Charlie’s desire to get back home.

As a science fiction fan, one of the best parts about time travel is seeing how each storyteller presents his or her incarnation. In other words, finding out what the rules are and what the consequences are of bending or breaking those rules. Untimed immediately draws readers in with how the protagonist details his bizarre non-existence in the eyes of everyone around him. Going unnoticed is something a lot of teenagers can probably identify with, but it goes a step further in that not even his own mother can remember his name. In fact, everyone who possesses the time travel ability experiences this with the “normals”, and the characters often either suffer because of it or use it to their advantage. Another unique twist is that males can only travel backward in time and females forward, though a pair can travel together in the direction of choice. This presents some interesting dilemmas for the characters in terms of how they’re going to travel in the direction they want or need to be going. Charlie is determined not to lose his time-traveling love interest Yvaine by jumping without her. A necessary “cooldown” period between jumps infuses plenty of tension in the more dramatic, frenzied moments of the story. Untimed deals with the consequences of characters running into other versions of themselves, and it also covers cause-effect relationships in terms of the historical timeline. While some of these concepts draw from Untimed‘s sci-fi predecessors, there’s definitely enough of a unique spin to keep this story feeling new.

Author Gavin doesn’t ignore that sci-fi history. Untimed does pay homage to time traveling adventures that have become iconic in the entertainment industry. The story includes numerous references, both direct and indirect, to pop culture series like Back to the Future and Sliders. I also got a strong Dr. Who feel thanks to the existence of seasoned time travelers and the steampunk, robotic villains that repeatedly show up to thwart them. I think Time Lord fans will enjoy Untimed, though Charlie plays more the role of the companion rather than possessing the charm and wisdom of the good Doctor.

Because the story is surprisingly adult in its content for a young adult novel, I think it broadens the range of readers the story will appeal to. The recent success of the Twilight and Hunger Games series have proven that the true audience for a young adult adventure can extend much wider than perhaps it was originally intended. While I did grow tired of Charlie’s lusting after Yvaine in the midst of the far more important time traveling and near-death experiences, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t capture some of the essence of a 16-year-old boy’s mind.

Untimed is a quick read with action consistently moving the story forward, and the separation of scenes within each chapter keeps the story from ever getting bogged down. While our hero is regrettably the least interesting character in the story, he serves his purpose as the vehicle for the events that play out and the other characters involved. Untimed is a fun read for all of the young science fiction fans out there, and may even appeal to older readers. As the start of a new series, it’ll be interesting to see how young Charlie grows and the fantastical people and places he’ll encounter in his future (and past) travels.

A sample of Untimed can be found on Andy Gavin’s official website, and the complete book can be purchased through any of the links below:

Amazon E-Book ASIN: B006PIMYLY
Amazon Paperback ASIN: 1937945014
Amazon Hardcover ASIN: 1937945006
Barnes & Noble: 1108093415  (on hold for Kindle Select)
Google: 7o8wLIfFUcwC  (on hold for Kindle Select)
Apple iBooks: 494719226 (on hold for Kindle Select)
CreateSpace: 3751712

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

By now much of the gaming world has experienced all of the wonder that the Portal series has brought to the industry. Developer David Johnson of Smudged Cat Games takes inspiration from those fun physics-based puzzles and quite literally turns them on their heads. SPOILER ALERT: Taking on the role of a scientist stuck trying to escape his own lab, players unlock additional guns that allow them to change their character’s size, repeatedly travel back and forth between time, and change the orientation of the game world. The first and last of those guns are fairly intuitive once experimented with a couple of times. On the flip side, the time travel gun really takes some getting used to. The same people who skip through EULAs and never read the fine print are the ones that are going to run into trouble.  With all of its nuances, time travel in Gateways is not the easiest concept to wrap one’s mind around. It took me reading the multi-page help menu explanation before it finally clicked. The application of this one gun alone probably make it worthy of its own game. When combined with the abilities of the other guns, there’s really an amazing amount of reality-bending power at the player’s disposal.

The game is structured in a Metroidvania style, with new powers and abilities helping the player open previously impassable doors. One of the niceties in Gateways is that shortcuts can be opened up within the lab that allow the player to quickly travel back to the earlier areas almost in a hub-like design. At times though, it’s easy to feel lost if you don’t know about the existence of the overworld map. I’d played through a good portion of the game before realizing it was there, which would have saved me a lot of time. Having that map at my disposal definitely changed my overall opinion of the game. Backtracking can get a little tedious, especially if you have to repeatedly perform the same series of death-defying feats to reach a particular room. But as long as players use the map to get a general feel for where to go next, they should easily avoid some of the headaches I ran into.

The difficulty of the puzzles later on can get a bit frustrating. Smudged Cat even released an update that allows players to select a ‘Normal’ mode to tone things down a bit. I never got to the point where I threw down the controller in disgust, but there were times where I certainly recognized that saving the game, walking away, and coming back with a fresh mind was the way to go. One of the smart design choices was to only allow a single gun to be used in solving the first 90% or so of the puzzles. Otherwise, it would’ve been far too daunting a task to figure out which guns to whip out and in what order. However, late in the game the rules change such that you’re going to need to use multiple guns in sequence to solve getting through some of the doors. Most of these really tough puzzles can be solved with patience and determination, but even I had to eventually throw in the towel and either search for a solution online or purchase the answer using orbs collected in-game. Difficulty is always a subjective quality to judge, but I honestly feel like Smudged Cat was trying a bit too hard to boggle our minds. As a reviewer, it was a bit stressful trying to hurry towards a solution, but gamers taking on the challenge at a more casual pace will likely appreciate the pacing and challenge more. Overall I felt like the quality of the puzzles is not only great for an indie game, but puts it right on par with the best to be found in the entire video game industry. With only a few exceptions, they’re that good and that fun and certainly elicit that ‘a-ha!’ moment when solved.

Gateways is not all about the puzzles. There is a light amount of platforming, but a good portion of it takes place in between unlocking doors to new areas, rather than being central to the puzzles themselves. There are, of course, exceptions particularly when dodging one’s own clones in a time-travel solution or when changing the orientation of the lab. I thought this aspect of the game was very well done, especially with the feel of jumping. The right flightiness of jumping is not something that every XBLIG manages to nail, but the developer was successful here.

As with all of the other Smudged Cat titles I’ve played, there’s a high level of refinement in the presentation. Yes, the visual quality is, for better or worse, decidedly retro. However, the music is atmospheric, the menu system intuitive, and the help very… helpful. I mentioned before that there’s a great series of instructions in the help system for how each of the guns work, and I would consider it a must-read. The visual effects produced by opening the different gateways provide that same wonder first experienced with Portal. Though lower-res, I think it is even more awe-inspiring here when you can see clones of yourself running around in different stages of time traveling.  It’s easy to tell from the way the whole package is put together that Smudged Cat has been down this road before and learned a thing or two about how to assemble a finished product. That’s something that’s usually lacking on the XBLIG service.

The effects seen by approaching open gateways provide a cool, visual treat

Gateways not a perfect game, but it really raises the bar for what puzzle games on XBLIG should aim for. I lost count of how many times I thought to myself “What a wonderfully crafted puzzle, you tricky bastard.” A lot of people are going to draw the obvious comparisons between Gateways and Portal including me in this very article. In its own indie way Gateways goes on to do so much more. Perhaps the best praise I can heap upon this title is to say that it wouldn’t surprise me to start seeing Gateways-inspired titles start to pop up in the near future. Despite some gripes about the difficulty, I can say with full confidence that I consider it a polished gem, and I believe most players will agree.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

Note: This review was conducted using version 1.11 of the game.

Additional Gateways coverage:

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on Clearance Bin Review
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© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In City Tuesday, players take on the role of an unnamed citizen tasked with stopping the machinations of a bomb-crazy criminal element. There’s very little backstory for who these villains are, and there’s never an explanation for who the protagonist is or why he alone is responsible for saving the city. The goal is clear though: capture all of the bombs before time runs out.

The player does have one thing working in his or her favor: the ability to relive that same momentous day over and over again. At any time, players can rewind the clock to restart the day, though any bombs that have been captured don’t need to be obtained again. In true Bill Murray fashion, the day can be spent gathering information about the personalities and movement patterns of citizens of the city. This gives the player a timetable under which they can operate to ensure they’re in the right place at the right time. This implementation of time travel in video games is not a wholly unique concept, classics like Majora’s Mask immediately come to mind, and even though it’s not implemented as deeply here, it’s done reasonably well.

The complexity of the puzzles quickly ramps up, but never gets too difficult. City Tuesday begins with simple one-screen brainteasers to introduce players to the controls and shortly afterwards to the time reset concept. There’s a running timer and non-controllable events are set for specific times, because of this it’s impossible in the latter stages of the game to collect all of the bombs in a single run. Players will have to talk to citizens to learn passcodes or follow them as they move from one location to another as their actions set new events in play. Often movement to specific locations is restricted by security guards, so learning how and when to slip by takes some cunning and patience. There are plenty of red herring characters and events thrown in that serve to make sure the solutions aren’t too obvious and to make the city feel more alive. There’s also a good amount of humor to be found in the information about all of the people encountered along the way.

Coming into the 2012 Indie Games Uprising event, of which City Tuesday is a part, this game was at the top of my radar and it all started with a look at the visual style. The design was inspired by help signs seen in public transportation. All of the characters are drawn as stick figures and the settings involve a lot of train stations, parking lots, and other public transit-based themes. The game also opens up with an artistic opening cinematic that has to be seen to be appreciated. I came away very impressed with the aesthetics of this game.

The signage-based design is a visual treat

Unfortunately, there must be some inherent flaw with creating a mad bomber game. Much like last year’s SpeedRunner HD – also part of the last Indie Games Summer Uprising – City Tuesday is incredibly short. Less than an hour after sitting down to fire up the game for the first time, I reached the rather abrupt and ultimately unsatisfying ending. The game had just hit its stride with four or five bombs spread across a dozen or so screens, many of which had events cross over between them. Just like that, though, the game was over. There wasn’t even a closing cinematic to tie a ribbon on the story. Just a bland end screen that I wasn’t even sure at first was an end screen. It’s disappointing on a few levels. Having just pumped hour after hour into Smooth Operators, it was surprising that this game was over. Since there’s no variability in the way events play out, there’s no reason to play through the game again. Honestly, though, I think the biggest reason I was disappointed in the game was because for that one hour I saw a ton of promise as the game kept building up the puzzle sophistication. The puzzles were fun and there was personality. Sadly, in the end it felt more like a proof of concept than a full-fledged game. Hopefully the developers can take this solid framework and make a fleshed-out sequel.

I had no trouble with finding a voice for the things I loved and hated about City Tuesday. What was problematic was trying to assign it a review score. The content of the game is good, even bordering on great. But is there enough to justify a solid rating? The crushing disappointment of the game’s brevity is counterbalanced by the fun factor of the puzzles. In the end, it was the game’s visual style that gave it the slightest of nudges into recommendation territory. Buyers beware, though, as those expecting a full-length adventure will be the ones blowing up.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Review on The Indie Ocean

Review on Clearance Bin Review

Review on Indie Gamer Chick

Review on theXBLIG.com

Review on Indie Theory

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Here’s the rest of their press release:

Timeslip was originally a Playstation One game developed with a Net Yaroze and released on an “Official Playstation Magazine UK” cover disk.  It’s a time travelling 2D platform game where you are caught in a continual time loop, forever travelling back in time to encounter past echoes of yourself.  Whilst using your past echoes is the key to opening doors and progressing through the levels they must also be avoided to prevent causing a paradox.  Timeslip was the very first game to feature self co-op back in 1999 and was re-released for the XBox LIVE Indie Games channel featuring updated HD graphics and a fresh sound track with the ability to switch back to the original version for that retro feeling.

© 2012 – 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.