Chronology
no regerts
Sometimes (often) I idly wish I could go back to when I was say, eighteen, and make a bunch of different decisions that would presumably lead me to making more out of my twenties. Chronology is a 2D puzzle platformer that’s sort of about this, except instead of “playing less dota” it’s “saving the world”.
The backstory is that there’s been some sort of cataclysm and everything is ruined. Your main guy is an old scientist, or alchemist, or, I dunno, someone, who works out a way to travel back and forth in time to a moment pre-cataclysm. He determines to use his time travelling powers to go back and prevent the apocalypse by hunting down his former mentor, who happened (through some not-very-well explained thing that actually doesn’t seem to have much to do with your ability to time travel??) to have caused the whole disaster. Alas, a lot of the pathway is blocked, so, as you go about your platformy business, you need to shift between the two points in time, sometimes getting an item from one to bring to the other, sometimes changing something in the Before time so the environment will be different in the After time, sometimes just using a platform that exists in one but not the other, in any case solving a series of puzzles that eventually let you move your way from the left of screen to the right, from one level to the next.
This initial gambit is complicated slightly by the introduction of a secondary character, a large snail who happens to be able to pause time. The snail can slide around platforms but not jump, so you often end up traversing the level as the old man and continually calling the snail to teleport to you as you go. As well as being able to pause time, the snail is an extra paper-weight for levers, and a moveable platform from which to reach extra heights. You combine these possibilities with the two versions of each level and there’s quite a bit to consider, sometimes, if the answer isn’t immediately apparent.
To that end, most of the puzzles are...fun? I mean, I quite enjoyed this. And I don’t even think it was just will to procrastinate.
The story is fine, take it or leave it. The characters aren’t great. The old man is kind of a dick – he seems to hate the snail at first even though progress would literally be impossible without it. To be fair, though, the snail is also super annoying, voiced in overly-earnest childlike squeaks. The platforming can be a bit imprecise, but at least death by obstacle or gap result in no punishment. More tedious is when completing a puzzle that involves multiple steps of repositioning both the snail and the old man, and slipping off a platform can lead to having to do the whole thing again, which, because the process involves a lot of shifting between both characters and time-periods, it is never an instinctive task and always feels annoying to repeat. A couple of puzzles toward the end felt a bit esoteric in what they were asking me to do (read: I feel bad about having to look up a walkthrough), though perhaps that’s forgivable given the number of possible elements to each one.
Still, it’s a decent little game. A successful encounter for the list, you might even say. I liked the way it went about introducing and teaching its elements. It gets extra credit for knowing when to not overstaying its welcome, for letting me finish a game in a few sweet hours.
Chronology was one of the many games that landed in the 2016 Yogcast Jingle Jam. Merry xmas to myself from three years ago, I guess? It’s still the only Yogcast I’ve gone in on, though. This year’s one started with too much that I already had so, I dunno. I forget that the point of all this was charity.
Released in 2014, it was the first game made by Bedtime Digital Games, a Danish studio who have since put out Back to Bed and Figment.
up next is Chuchel