I haven't put much time into this yet, so I don't have a lot of formed thoughts, but I did want to gush about the design decisions for this game, because it could shape up to be an amazing Metroidvania.
Your central mechanic is the ability to see the near future, so enemies have their attacks and movements telegraphed about a second before the action happens, so you have time to react and plan a response appropriately. You also have a limited ability to rewind time (even if you Game Over in order to avoid the Game Over sticking) in the event that you make critical mistakes (whether getting hit or landing on spikes or whatnot).
That's all cool and very useful, but I want to talk about the Time Tree. There's these points you find while exploring that basically serve as checkpoints and are points of memory in your existence. As you make progress through the game, you may encounter areas where you can't make further progress but need to return to a previous exploration point.
But this isn't fast traveling between locations, but rather between time periods when going to a location. Returning to a previous location on the time tree means returning to a point in your memory. Some power-ups you find while exploring are permanently tied to your being because you learn about them from possible "future" scenarios and they're instructional in nature, so you basically get said power-up permanently even if you move elsewhere on the timeline. Some that are physical (like a health increase) are reliant on you going back down the path you previously explored in order to acquire those power-ups again.
After you're essentially through the tutorial of how the mechanics work, you learn that the reality of the game is that you have a limited time in which to explore the world or you lose the game. But through the ability to go back to a previous point in time from the future you explored, you can basically work your way down to a location, figure out the value of the path you took, and decide if you want to just keep your power-ups and go back or maybe do something more permanent and physically trek back before creating a new memory/save at a previous memory point that you passed earlier. The game keeps track of your most recent memories at each point and follows the timeline splits through all of them and lets you travel back to any particular one you've made at any point, even ones that might have ultimately lead to a dead end.
It creates an extra layer of complexity while keeping everything you explore familiar so that backtracking specifically is for the purposes of time management (and occasionally checking a new path you opened up), and I really kinda dig that.
Also, kinda loving the soundtrack.
That's all I've got for awhile, since this is probably going to be sitting on the backlog until post-Elden Ring.
Your central mechanic is the ability to see the near future, so enemies have their attacks and movements telegraphed about a second before the action happens, so you have time to react and plan a response appropriately. You also have a limited ability to rewind time (even if you Game Over in order to avoid the Game Over sticking) in the event that you make critical mistakes (whether getting hit or landing on spikes or whatnot).
That's all cool and very useful, but I want to talk about the Time Tree. There's these points you find while exploring that basically serve as checkpoints and are points of memory in your existence. As you make progress through the game, you may encounter areas where you can't make further progress but need to return to a previous exploration point.
But this isn't fast traveling between locations, but rather between time periods when going to a location. Returning to a previous location on the time tree means returning to a point in your memory. Some power-ups you find while exploring are permanently tied to your being because you learn about them from possible "future" scenarios and they're instructional in nature, so you basically get said power-up permanently even if you move elsewhere on the timeline. Some that are physical (like a health increase) are reliant on you going back down the path you previously explored in order to acquire those power-ups again.
After you're essentially through the tutorial of how the mechanics work, you learn that the reality of the game is that you have a limited time in which to explore the world or you lose the game. But through the ability to go back to a previous point in time from the future you explored, you can basically work your way down to a location, figure out the value of the path you took, and decide if you want to just keep your power-ups and go back or maybe do something more permanent and physically trek back before creating a new memory/save at a previous memory point that you passed earlier. The game keeps track of your most recent memories at each point and follows the timeline splits through all of them and lets you travel back to any particular one you've made at any point, even ones that might have ultimately lead to a dead end.
It creates an extra layer of complexity while keeping everything you explore familiar so that backtracking specifically is for the purposes of time management (and occasionally checking a new path you opened up), and I really kinda dig that.
Also, kinda loving the soundtrack.
That's all I've got for awhile, since this is probably going to be sitting on the backlog until post-Elden Ring.