Design Journal - Time Travel in games

Time travel has always been a big interesting concept for me; I have often sat for hours pondering (yes pondering) how time travel could work and the logic behind being able to travel around through past and future events. Recursive game play is something that I have wanted to introduce for a long time in a casual game, I have come up with a few ideas on how this could be achieved but none seem to work for me.

There have been several games that deal with time travel indirectly where the player is in control of a device or instant that brings them around in time having minimal effect on the actual timeline such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, the TimeSplitters series with most recently TimeSplitters: Future Perfect in 2005, Okami and many RTS games. These games all have elements of time travel or span over multiple time lines which is close to the idea I wanted to produce in a casual format. But these games only deal with time travel indirectly without using time travel as a viable game mechanic.

Another game I should mention that is close to the game I would like to produce is the stylised game XIII released in 2003 which used the concept of flashbacks as the main protagonist regained his memories from amnesia. While this isn’t directly related to time travel, the effects of how you performed in the past were used to change how you acted in the present.

This system while expanding on a brilliant narrative through the story allows the player to feel fully involved with the protagonist’s life that they are controlling. Unlike other games where you are dropped into a situation and deal with the events of a persons daily life like other FPS games. In XIII you have all the knowledge that the character himself possesses right from the beginning as both player and character have exactly no idea about the background, the life and the events leading up to the beginning of the game.

The flashback sequences let you control the characters life essentially telling them how the events unfolded for them back in the past. This style of storey telling is quiet unique and something I haven’t found in a lot of other games.

There have been several other games I have found that use a more sophisticated approach when dealing with time are the Xbox series Blinx, the multiplatform series Prince of Persia and most recently TimeShift by Vivendi Games. Each of these games gave the player the ability to rewind their actions, slow down and speed up time by using a device or object that gives them this unique ability.

However for my casual game is unlike these other games, in the game I wish to create the player would have complete control of time being able to bounce in and out of time at any point throughout the game as well as interact with previous renditions of themselves to complete complex puzzles that require multiple iterations across various timelines.