The Tides of Time Reviews

A zelda inspired indie thats in-game world resets every 20 minutes, at first I really liked it. but after the second reset I just could not be bothered to continue. the islands are to spread out with progress/hints being so annoyingly vague I felt like my time was just being wasted. the pixel visuals are cute but the charm wheres of fast same with the music there is one good track in game (you know what i am talking about) the rest of the in game music is offensively bad. Try it if your really looking for a cheap game but I feel that this is asking for to much of the players time with how basic its Mechanics GameplayLoop is.

Very good game! The puzzles are nice and fit in well with the time wind dynamic. I did find 2 bugs however (huge spoiler warning): [spoiler] 1. If you fight the whale with the black sword he wont go into his final phase and will just sit at the front of the island and attack you while invincible. 2.When fighting the elephant boss the hit detection on whether you dashed into his legs when he stands up was very finicky and didn't work for me at all unless I dashed into his legs from the very front within a very narrow time window (i.e it wouldn't register even if he was still standing). This made me think that for the first few times I fought him that I was doing something wrong when I didnt. [/spoiler]

After finishing the game a week ago, I can surely say that I really enjoyed it and that it is one of the best indie games that I have ever played. The game is heavily influenced by the Legend of Zelda games and especially by the top-down NES, SNES, and Game Boy titles (which are my favorite). In fact, while playing, it felt like a modern Game Boy Color game, which I loved since Game Boy Color is the handheld with which I grew up. [h1]Summary[/h1] In brief, you play as a young man named Charlie, who is trapped in a time loop and relives the same day, the Festival of the Red Sun, all over again. In particular, a dark shade that was trapped in the lighthouse of the main island causes the Red Sun to come close to the world and burn everything (An idea inspired by the Falling Moon in Majora's Mask). The player has 10 minutes until the Sun destroys the world and when this happens, the game is reset. [h1]General Review[/h1] The first thing that I really liked is the lack of narrative.  You wake up on an island, without any introduction, trying to figure out what is going on and what you need to do in the game. You just pick up a sword, because as we all know very well: "It is dangerous to go alone!".  You have to talk to everyone that you meet and explore a lot in order to steadily build the story. The overworld is a group of islands scattered around the ocean, most of them having a specific purpose in the story or a treasure to obtain. The exploration is hard as you don't even have a map showing where you are. This is something that I really liked. It has been a really long time since the last time that I had to grab pen and paper in order to sketch the map myself and keep notes of my findings. This made me feel like a real corsair! The hero learns some intuitive skills (e.g., teleportation) by leveraging "ancient technology" (Breath of the Wild reference), which allow you to reach previously unreachable places. Through your journey, you will need to free up the three guardians, who will give you important information on how to make your way to the final boss and defeat it.  The combat is not tough, with the exception of some locations in which it would be better to explore a little bit more and gain some "heart containers" before visiting those areas. There are also some interesting puzzles that leverage the unique skills that you learn through your journey. I really liked the music. In my opinion, the best music track is the soundtrack of the Old Kingdom, as it truly achieves to travel you to an imaginative world. [h1]Analysis of the time-loop mechanic[/h1] The main element of the game is the time-loop mechanic. As mentioned in the summary, the game resets after 10 minutes of playtime. At first you may be annoyed, but if you give it a try you will quickly get used to this concept. In fact, you don't really need anything that you collect during a specific day for your journey. What you actually collect is information, which you add up in order to find your way to the final boss and learn how to defeat it. So the idea is that after each reset you just set the goal of the current day and you try to achieve it. For instance, you say: "I will pick up my sword. I will go to the next island to pick up a shield. I will travel to that island and I will do this and that". The next day, you set another goal and you mark another path. This mechanic has received bad criticism in other reviews. Personally, it didn't bother me that much. I really understand the concept of the time loop, as it adds a significant amount of difficulty to the game, since otherwise the game could be finished in a maximum of an hour of playtime. Don't forget that this game has been developed by a single (!) developer and this idea is brilliant. However, I need to admit that at some points I felt some pressure in order to reach the goal that I set for the day before the time ends, which was a bit stressful. I usually play this kind of action-adventure games in order to unwind and relax, not to rush. However, this happened very few times in the game, so it wasn't a big deal for me. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] To sum up, as I already mentioned, this is one of the best indie games that I have ever played. The fact that this game was made by a single developer is impressive. All the love that he put in this game and this detailed work with respect to the graphics to look so beautiful and to resemble the old Game Boy Color games is mind-blowing (at least for a Zelda fan like me). [i]In my opinion, this game is a tribute to the Legend of Zelda series.[/i] I am hoping to see a sequel to this game. Probably, a similar approach to the Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask could be followed (but the other way around). The time-loop mechanic could be completely removed and in order to increase the difficulty of the game, several carefully designed dungeons could be distributed all over the overworld. This is a concept that I would definitely give it a try.

For a small game, the final result has a decent amount of layers. It was difficult for me to get a hold of what exactly I should be doing in the beginning, but once you get started it takes off from there. There is also a built in support system thankfully.

Would recommend cause this dev needs the traffic to motivate them to keep making games. This game is clearly one of the early ironing out the kinks in their saga of epic adorable games. That being said, I hate this game. I love the art style. Its soooooooo adorable. I play Mac, don't know if that effects functionality. The game doesn't go full screen. With WASD you have to use C to interact with people and you have no option to rebind keys. There is no cursor onscreen but it doesn't need one. You just find yourself looking for it ALL THE TIME. It's clearly a controller based system with WASD being a secondary less useful option. You can find a map but cant carry it with you. You have to find all these different things and figure out all these different puzzles and you have to do them all in 1 run through. The second the shade guy comes out of your backside and haunts your dreams for the rest of time, you have to restart at your house with nothing. Its like 7 minutes of playtime for a single loop. And bam. reset. The dialogue boxes don't disappear until you start to walk away form the npc and they cover half the screen so you cant see where you're going to be able to walk away, and the font is unreadable since it was created in a pixel style in a specific resolution and you cannot change game resolution or go full screen. You have to boat everywhere which would be cool if you could run ashore at any island at any location. You can't. you have to find a dock, I get it, but theres no map and I have 7 minutes till I get violated and have to start over. This game breeds anxiety on a cosmic level. That's rare. Hat's off. My run was 23 minutes long. This was enough time for two in game time loops. The first one was very enjoyable. I pet my dog, got a sword, met link(seriously link is in this game) he showed me a map and told me how depressed he is, told me to bring him a CRAP ton of money in exchange for secrets, I think link is gambling again... I killed a pirate king, teleported with a crab a few times, came back to town and found the salem witch trials in full swing, everyone was drunk and the sky turned red and I got violated from behind by a shade that came out of my backside... begs the question does he live there or am I like his precious and he's been locked in that tower a million years stoked to get out and this endless 7 minute loop is some wise wizard's last ditch effort to give me a way out of it. idk. The second loop gave me a headache, I ran around trying to find a way to kill myself, I failed miserably, beat a cow senseless, the sky turned red, the cow I had beaten but failed to kill (undead cow?) was then ABDUCTED BY ALIENS, then the shade came out my backside again and proceeded to haunt my dreams for all reality. This game is good. It's a bad game. But its good. Its got good BONES. Support the dev. He's going places. Seriously. Im not asking a refund. I WANTED this game. I still do :) To the dev: Polish it bro, keep going. Your art is sooooo good. Every bit. You obviously have the art talent on lock. you also have a story. That's a start! You just need some design polish. I believe in you, and your undead abducting cows. PM if you want design help. Im indie solo myself. Would be glad to help :)

A really wonderful game. Beautiful graphics, great writing, and fun and challenging, well, challenges throughout. In this game every dialogue matters whether you know it or not. Notice the clues along the way and complete the adventure! Would and will definitely recommend it to everyone!

Tides of time is good but not for everyone, the characteres are likeable the time machanic simple though its quite irritating to have worked for every thing just to have it all disapear because you run out of time. But apart from that its a solid game. If you like RPGs, Milking goats, catching pigs, Time loops or fighting pirates this is the game for you. Having come back to the Game, its better than I remembered, highly recomend.

Tides of Time is a single player action adventure game with an unusual concept - after twelve minutes the game resets and you have to start all over again. After the initial confusion about how I was supposed to make any progress at all, I just started playing and now I think it’s actually quite a brilliant game concept. One might think, that it gets quite repetitive and boring, but that isn’t the case at all. With every game cycle you gather more information about the world, which leads to different paths and tasks for your next five minutes. You might spend your whole time on helping the old farmer gathering his pigs or solving a puzzle, just to get a clue and fight your way through hordes of pirates in the next game cycle. Besides the concept, the game is designed in a playful pixel art style, which I found to be quite gorgeous. Dialogues are kept short and amusing and helped giving every NPC his unique character (I actually started calling one of them my grandpa and visited him and his storyline as often as I could, just because I fell in love with the old bud). Most importantly the games soundtrack is chosen very nicely and plays a big part in creating a different atmosphere in every game section. Overall, I really enjoyed playing Tides of Time to the point that I couldn’t put my controller away (you can play with controller or mouse and keyboard). It’s not the most challenging game and as a rather experienced gamer, I would have liked some fights or puzzles to be a little bit harder, but that’s about all I can really criticize. Looking forward to more content like this.

The game is good for a small indie project but it seems like its missing its final polish. The game pulled me in with its aesthetics, this retro style zelda-like but its main selling point the time loop "mechanic" (its just a timer) ended up feeling more tedious than anything else and you can see it took heavy inspiration from the game "minit" but with minit certain things you do within one play moves over to the next minute of game play like certain puzzles and items, so far my experience with Tides of Time is just a reset and the loop feels too long at 20 minutes but also feels too short. (weird way to put it I know) Unlike minit where the loops for such a mechanic are very short, Tides of Times make me feel like I am wasting my time at moments and its not giving me short incentives to carry forward, especially with the lack of information. The game lacks explanation. when first playing the game I was pressing all my keys to see what they would do instead of the game telling me how to attack and shield. The tutorial for that was an island over and I missed it until my third loop. The game shows controller support but for me it didn't quite work, no D pad control and not all the buttons have been assigned so I had to default to keyboard. Another point of the lack of explanation is that its not clear what I am doing and why, it seemed to just be pointing me in directions to figure out the puzzles. Why am I doing these puzzles? who is the big baddie? Why am I fighting the big baddie? What is this item in my inventory? I feel like the game is trying to do the whole "natural" tutorial thing. Where the player will naturally figure out what you need to do but there were moments in the game I ended up stuck and starting over due to there being a lack of explanation. I got a new item that allows me to swap places with enemies and animals but when i got the power there wasn't anything clearly in sight and i was then stuck on the island, until I restarted thinking i missed something and then ran around after getting the power up and seeing an enemy that was not clearly on screen until I went right up to the edge of the island and I shot it and found out how that power up worked. If there was something like the symbol of the item representing swapping or somewhere within that area that shows what the item does it would have been more clear to me. The music unfortunately falls flat for me. The tracks feel too small, uninspired and repetitive, there is little growth over the bars and sound like the musician have written four bars of music is just chopping and changing it like you are using pre-made loops. The music for the sailing unfortunately really doesn't work with similar issues of having the loops too short but it doesn't invoke space and adventure and the music seems really tense and unfitting its also bothersome that the music doesn't seamlessly loop with a 3-5 second gap before it actually restarts, im not sure if its the track or the engine doing this but its really jarring and noticeable. in overall though I think the game is good especially for a small team/solo indie project with it maybe being your first or second game developed. The art style and aesthetics are really well done and the overall theme is really well done but it feels like it could have gone under some more QA and playtesting as it just misses the mark a tad and could have gone with a few more weeks work to iron out some of the edges. If you read this developer please don't be dis-heartened this is a great effort and you have nailed the aesthetics and theme for the game it just needs a bit more polish and refining - if I come back to this game in a few months and it seems to be updated then I will update my review and give it a thumbs up.