Review: Green Game: TimeSwapper (PS Vita).
At the end of last year, we got the Polish Red Game Without a Great Name for Vita, in which fortunately the gameplay was a bit more thoughtful than the title. How did the green sequel come out?
The “red” prototype allowed us to indirectly direct the mechanical bird – by dragging our finger, we teleported this flying creature to the place we chose. Green Game: TimeSwapper (PS Vita) breaks with this mechanic, although after the screenshots it could seem that only the background color has changed.
Once again, we have to help the bird get to its destination, but this time we’ll do it by… manipulating time! Supposedly. Don’t expect anything big – all we do is move the lever to the left or right, which activates some elements of the board, turns off others, and rotates or changes their position. Depending on the lever setting, our bird becomes young or old, but this is just a cosmetic change and I only saw it looking through the screenshots since I was posted in this review.
The problem is control. The game is designed for mobile devices, so we can only use the Vita touch screen and it’s not convenient. Moving their finger on the screen, they changed the position of our lever, but you have to feel the moment when you take your hand off the screen. We hold it too short and the desired position will not jump, while too long holding makes the lever go crazy. Not that some deliberate obstruction, it just doesn’t always move in the right direction, and this is one of those games where precision is very important.
To pass the board, our bird has to reach the finish line. We usually guide it by turning on and off blowing pipes, but we can also rotate some of them, and the screen is full of obstacles with an icon of the appropriate position of the levers (clock hand? Pendulum? For me it’s a simple lever) to activate them. There was also, among others a temporary slowdown of the hero or a field on which he flies faster – and this can still be somehow connected to the manipulation of time. But all the rest? Not really.
The boards are the strongest element of the game. It is true that there are only fifty of them, which is enough for an hour and a half, but most of them offer several routes to your destination and well-placed collectibles. I wanted to get a complete set for each level, but the crude flipping of levers and constant deaths effectively put me off. I can’t forgive the developers for not thinking about using the Vita buttons.
If we were given a reasonable control for this “time change”, that is, to dangle with a lever, I could recommend the production with a pure heart. Even the background track I listened to over and over again did not get bored. It is also a pity that the loading times take several seconds, which is often the time needed to pass the loading level. The controls failed, making it impossible to gently or however precisely move our only tool, the lever. It’s a pity, because the design still catches the eye, and the levels are well designed. But is it worth the effort for them?
