Time Me

‘Time Me’s’ mechanic revolves around the player initially recording their movement, and then once ready playing it back either in chronological or reverse order, and using the 'playback' characters' movement to solve platforming puzzles.

Initially, these mechanics are tied to in-world objects so that the player is undistracted by choice, however after they have learnt the mechanics and have been tested on them, the player will be given a tool that allows them to control these mechanics from anywhere in the level.

An issue I can foresee arising in the course of developing this game is the player getting stuck. While this may not be an issue in early levels as the player has no control over where they can record or playback their recording from, later levels give the player the freedom of choice which could at any time get them stuck if I am not careful with level design.

To alleviate this, I will need to heavily test levels to ensure any area the player can get stuck in can also be escaped. alternatively, a kill switch could be included which allows the player to respawn at the start of the level.

Initially, I had planned for the shadow to copy the players’ movements perfectly, including position, rotation, velocity etc, however, while I was making the initial prototype I found that I didn’t want the shadow to be in exactly the same position the player had been or even use the same velocity, as this would allow me to make more interesting puzzles (i.e. if the player walks into a wall while shadow recording, but then moves the wall from another part of the map, allowing the shadow to pass-through and active a button), As such I have switched over to the shadow copying the player’s inputs instead.

This pivot away from copying location data has come with its own issues when replaying in reverse as shadows would no longer jump at the correct times or in the correct ways, because of this I have decided to remove jumping from shadows. While it may seem like a blow to the usability of the mechanic, it has actually given me some very interesting ideas for new levels and challenges to pose to the player.