Review: Super Time Force

Super Time Force is developed and published by Capybara Games developer of the great Below and Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery. STF is a fantastic homage to games of the past in the manner of an oldschool pixellated graphical style. Think Leisure Suit Larry, but instead of a slow paced adventure game STF is a hyper time traveling romp!

Playing STF, I was assaulted by waves of reminiscence, being torn back to my childhood with 8 bit music and an incredibly basic game. Although the music stayed the same the game threw me for a loop as what appeared basic on the surface, was anything but. As I took my first steps, I was initiated into a world of time travel and having to manage a platformer on both lives and competion time. Switching characters and rewinding time are core tenets to STF and it quickly becomes apparent that to succeed you must master both. By performing one task with one character then switchng allows for a kind of macro which runs as play another pass. So, first you need to set a run through the level, then rewind time, then set another run and so on. When you combine all your runs together you are finally able to complete the level.

The time given for some levels seems incredibly short and unfathomable to pass until you see that you have 30 takes to do it. Alternately, some levels allow infinite incarnations of your self or other characters allowing for dozens of copies all shooting the same boss or object to progress the level. Hidden in each level are power ups that add to your time, retry count and even power ups that will only become visible if you rewind in the right area. Levels also include a race of alien time travelers which set you an additional challenge to overcome.

To make it even more complex all the characters have a primary attack and a charged attack which vary greatly. Shieldy Blockerson has a melee attack that deflects bullets back at enemies and when charged will drop a shield that will absorb most attacks. Jean Rambois — your typical run and gunner —  can unleash hot lead or fire a three directional rapid fire volley and Aimy McKillin has a laser sniper rifle with a normal shot or charged shot that will shoot through most floors/walls to reach hiding baddies. There are unlockable characters to collect including my favourite, Jef Leopard. Jef is your heavy hitter and cruises around with a rocket launcher who made me fire up some glam rock to play long with.

STF is set in the 80’s and is a whimsical tale of a scientist who upon developing time travel upsets the future. His future self travels back with a team — the titular Super Time Force — to fix the mistake. Much of the game’s humour is derived from the culture clashes of past meets future andI was laughing out loud on a many occasions. There are plenty of nods and winks to the 80’s and pop culture that will make you get a good chuckle.

STF is one of the best times I’ve had with a side-scrolling platformer in a long time. There’s so much content on offer here that I’ve actually stopped playing any other games, which is a testament to just how good I think Super Time Force is. Now to roll back time so I can spend my day off again playing more games.

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