Led by Colonel Repeatski, the Super Time Force spend their time traveling through both time and space to make the world a better place to live in.
Ever thought a world where humans and dinosaurs coexisted would be neat? So did Repeatski. He sent his team of wormhole-surfin’ militants to the prehistoric age to topple a mighty tyrannosaurus rex and bring down the asteroid that, in another timeline, would bring on the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The maniacal mind behind the plot to rid the world of these terrible lizards? The one and only Dr. Infinity.
The Super Time Force follow him from 1,000,000 B.C. and run the chronological gamut until they reach Future City.
Super Time Force looks wonderful in motion.
It might be tough to appreciate it fully while you’re enthralled with keeping your team’s timeline in order, but it’s truly wonderful. It’s easy to correlate pixel art with indie and indie with simplicity, but it’s an obvious reality that pixel art is just as time consuming and gruelling on developers. It’s intricate work, but it is work that pays dividends when the job is done right. And it most certainly has been executed with aplomb here.
There’s no better feeling than finishing a level and getting to watch the replay. Letting it all sink in and seeing all of your efforts running and fighting alongside each other concurrently, is top drawer.
Super Time Force doesn’t have a whole lot of worlds, but the ones it does have are charming. There are six in all, and they’re selectable from the game’s central hub, known as the Spacebus. You’re also able to check which extra squad members you’ve rescued—such as Squirty Harry, who absolutely is as grim as he sounds—as well as how many glorbs you’ve collected, etc.
It’s an elegant way to take inventory in a sense without taking players out of the narrative. To this day, even seeing the over-decorated Colonel Repeatski pacing back and forth on deck still gets a laugh out of me.
Super Time Force just doesn’t take itself seriously and I think that’s what I enjoyed most about it.
Super Time Force has been described by Capybara’s own Kenneth Yeung as “Gunstar Heroes meets that one level in Braid.”
As you expect, each member of Super Time Force has their own unique ability that makes them particularly useful when enduring the curtain of bullet of fire. Whether it’s firing through walls as Aimy McKillin or deploying a bubble perimeter as Shieldy Blockerson, finding the perfect skill to compliment any given challenge is the hardest part of Super Time Force.
Poor strategy leads to wasted time-outs and, even worse, the loss of precious seconds.
Time-outs can be used whenever a player dies or voluntarily halts the progress of time, sifting backward through the timeline to find the perfect place to rejoin the fray as a ghost, ready to compliment the original steps you made – it’s a regular ‘army of you’. This mechanic can be used to gain a tactical advantage over a boss through sheer weight of numbers, or it can be used in a tactical effort to reach collectibles without wasting valuable time having your ‘original‘ veer from the path.
The trick is that you’ve only thirty time-outs up your sleeve, as well as a whole sixty seconds that— when you begin to falter and make missteps—can hastily leave you.
Run out of either and you fail.
Aside from Super Time Force’s clever and challenging time-bending mechanics, its secondary brilliance rests in its satisfying combat.
The guns punch holes through anything unfortunate to wait in their path and, although the aiming is a touch imprecise, it is an ever present pleasure seeing enemies—be they Blounbots or other—reduced to muck.
