

The indie scene has been overrun in recent years with games that play with time travel, in particular using that gimmick as an excuse to have multiple copies of the player character on screen simultaneously.

Blame Braid, I suppose, although clones were used only sparingly in Jonathan Blow's breakout hit in 2008.

That said, there's something refreshing about Time Paradox, an amateur Flash game submitted to the Game Brain contest on the Square Enix website. In Time Paradox you have a mere 30 seconds to reach an exit blocked by locked doors. There's never enough time to unlock all the doors yourself, but by stepping into a time machine you can reset the clock and work with your past self to escape.

The catch is this: Unlike all those other time travel clone games, you must not encounter your past self at all. Even looking him in the eye will cause you both to "faint" and create a time paradox, resetting the stage. There's even a horrible little scream that plays when you fail, one that is at odds with the cutesy retro graphics.

Time Paradox has an old-fashioned look to it, one that reminds me of Half-Minute Hero – which come to think of it also has a 30 second time limit. Unfortunately, the game is also very much old-fashioned in its design. There's no pause or mute button (rather unusual for a Flash game) and you are limited to three lives.

You can continue from the title screen, sure, but the unnecessary Game Over screen is pure tedium. I also found the controls to be oddly unresponsive at times, though that could be a limitation of my PC or my web browser.

My hope is that someone out there will pick up on the good ideas this game has and put them to use in a better game. Time travel is scary stuff; more games should reflect that.

Screengrab: Daniel Feit/Wired.com

Time Paradox [Square Enix, via AV Club]