A Stitch in Time (3.9Mb)
This is an arcade type top-down shooter/puzzle game by Frank Force, not to be confused with the similarly named Kim Possible series of online games, nor another online game with an identical name.
It’s a brief game in that you have a minute’s play per attempt - during which short time you have to collect as many as you can of 30 time shards. You will only save the universe if you manage to collect all 30 of the ‘fuzzy-shaped’ shards within the 60 seconds allowed! The game auto-saves your progress, if you get that far! The screen lightens darkens as you play, just to complicate matters.
It’s an extremely challenging game that takes place in a real bullet-hell environment. You have to shoot time ghosts as contact with them is immediately game over; and avoid all the ‘fragments’ they explode into after you shoot them, as you can only take a few hits from these fragments, and which fly off in all different directions. If it is clear you aren’t going to succeed (which will be often!) you can restart from where you were by re-entering the time warp, or press the ‘Ctrl’ key to start again from the beginning. There are also barriers which might need shooting through, or waiting until they intermittently open, or only let you through in one direction, and a maze of passages to investigate. You also get fired upon pretty constantly to add to your troubles, with homing-in seeking shots following your movements! No-one said it was going to be easy!
The puzzle element is in navigating, getting past obstacles and locating/getting the time shards. Made much more difficult by the shooter aspect of the game! The 60 seconds per attempt limit really ramps up the difficulty.
Movement is similar to ‘Asteroids’ -‘W’ key to move forwards ,‘A’ and ‘D’ keys to rotate and change direction L/R, and the ‘S’ key to slow down/reverse direction.
You aim with the mouse itself. Left mouse button for rapid fire (but overheats). Right mouse button fires a chargeable energy blast and middle mouse button or ‘Spacebar’ speeds up time (handy for getting out of trouble quickly!). ‘Ctrl’ key causes self-destruct and ‘Alt + Enter’ keys toggle between full-screen and windowed mode. ‘Esc’ key exits the game.
I should guess using a gamepad will make controlling your movement and aiming/firing a good deal easier! It does take a good bit of getting used to - with the keyboard controlling movement, and the mouse being used for aiming and firing. At first I was either getting aim ok and moving incorrectly, or moving correctly and getting aiming mixed-up.
Watching the video will make gameplay considerably clearer. The game engine is open-source should anyone with relevant skills wish to investigate/mod it.
You probably won’t get very far in the first few - or many attempts, until you get plenty of practice!
It’s a fun game with tidy colorful graphics and excellent music/ sound effects, (you can switch the (ogg) music on/off in-menu), that is excellent and really well worth playing!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW_FpmxNY6w
Download HERE
You can find two other games by the same author ‘Light the Way’ and ‘Protractor’ (named after ‘tractor beams’) HERE as well as ‘Mother Lover’ which I reviewed for the forum HERE
