Time Loader Review - Can You Go Home Again?

Time Loader builds itself upon a premise that's hard not to empathize with, utilizing the concept of time travel and environmental puzzles as both narrative hurdle and thematic weight. Everything about its construction rings with a certain profound sadness, a longing rarely put to words yet always there, like background radiation. 

It is a game about being tied to the past and being unable to escape on every level. That inherent quality, though, begs the question: is Time Loader rooted so deeply to formula and familiar trappings that it cannot also be compelling or profound on its own merits? Do its preoccupations and occasional flaws stop it from going as far with its premise as it intends to?

Title: Time Loader 

Developer: Flazm

Publisher: META Publishing

Version Played: Xbox One 

Release Date: March 10th, 2022

Note: Review code provided by HomeRun PR, on behalf of publisher

When weighing the worth of this game, one needs to take into account that much to its credit Time Loader doesn't mince words about where it expects our sympathies as an audience to lay. It opens on a day seemingly close to the present, as a scientist named Adam finalizes work on two astounding inventions: a self-sufficient AI-operated helper robot and a time machine. With this pair of creations Adam intends to alter one particular moment of his own history - the accident that left him bound to a wheelchair - in the hopes of restoring his ability to walk, thereby breaking free of the shadow that day cast over his life. Let it never be said that this game is subtle about the profound heartbreak it feels for its cast, but as a central motivation it's damned effective.

So it is that we are put in the shoes, or rather all-terrain wheels, of the aforementioned robot as they go back to that day in the summer of '95. As one may expect of a time travel story, complications arise, details of geography and timing of events established early on become relevant in new ways come act three, the future finds itself jeopardized - in other words, standard science-fiction fare. The upside to this is the plot never oversteps its bounds, playing to its strengths in terms of setting player goals and paying off progress with quietly profound moments of clarity.

It helps that Time Loader's greatest strength is in using environmental and sound design to emphasize the desperate yet earnest longing for a better status quo at the narrative's core. The segments set in 1995 are littered with era-appropriate touches like popular game consoles and VHS tapes, featuring rooms cast in warm lighting and scored with a soft, melancholic piano tune. Later, we get a glimpse of an alternate reality consumed by plant growth and shattered household trappings, hewing closer to apocalypse fiction than anything else. The contrast that this helps cultivate serves as a powerful way of both distinguishing the game in its genre and motivating the player to right that which has gone wrong.

That driving force is vital because in many ways, Time Loader is also a mechanically familiar game. Over the course of several hours you guide Adam’s robot through various rooms of his childhood home. The house's layout will be immediately recognizable to those who've played a Metroid or post-90s Castlevania; it's several stacked levels of densely packed rooms, with puzzles worked into the surroundings and a great many platforms to clamber upon.

The Metroid comparisons don't cease at the basic layout - indeed, much of the game seems intent on borrowing from that classic title for material. Puzzles center on manipulating or circumventing household objects, usually by making use of a growing number of accumlated context-sensitive tools (a screwdriver, springs to enable higher jumps, a soldering iron) or hopping from ledge to ledge. More sections of the house become available in tandem with access to tools, sometimes leading to cases where a room is revisited from a different angle or explored in greater depth.

Without question Time Loader's rooms make the most of the "ordinary household setting rendered as literally-larger-than-life maze" conceit; Adam's robot is constantly dwarfed in scale by kitchenware, garage shelves and other items we the audience take for granted. There's also a great deal of effort put into sprinkling background objects and collectables through areas that act as a solid, if obvious means of expanding our understanding of Adam and his extended family.

That said, though thematically on point and rich in detail, the puzzle design isn't exactly challenging or outside the box. The ever-present objective marker - serving as it does to keep you pointed in the most plot-relevant direction - plays the largest role in detracting from any kind of interesting detours or player-controller pace. Furthermore, the puzzles themselves often amount to little more than "go to one specific spot and hit the context sensitive button" or "use the slightly awkward aiming controls to grab and swing from a specific wall mount".

Speaking of which, the game's insistence that Adam's robot make use of a claw arm (aimed with the Xbox controller's right stick, grabbing objects with the left trigger button) for both item manipulation and environment traversal leads to some awkwardness in progression. It never feels quite comfortable aiming the arm, especially when there's a need to grab onto wall mounts and swing the robot between surfaces. This issue comes to a head during a climactic chase sequence in which timing and precise aim are crucial, leading to many instances of missed grabs and returning to a previous checkpoint.

The Bottom Line

In spite of the issues, though, Time Loader does manage to be endearing in its own right. The odd control problem and an overt safeness to the design don't detract from the game's magnificent sense of place and commitment to its themes. While not the most remarkable of games, it's emotionally satisfying while it lasts.

SCORE: 7/10