Time Surge 2: Clean Up Time by HitchH1k3r
Seven years of packages being delivered just seconds after they were ordered thanks to the time traveling Starship Time Surge... and no ChronoCore accidents, that is until now.
In Time Surge 2, you'll find yourself...
Cleaning Up Time 
Solving Puzzles 
Doing It Again 
And Again (and again) 
...and again. You might think to get out of this you're gonna need a bigger mop, but in fact the very one you have can help you out of being stuck in a time loop.
Controls
- See bottom right of game screen ^_^
Pro-Tips
- Touching Chronotoxin will cause time to loop, resetting the game.
- If you don't want to wait for the Chronotoxin to get you, you can hold down the 'R' key to reset early.
- You can use your Mop to gather ChronoCore fluid, and put it on other things to unstuck them in time.
- Unstuck objects will not reset with the rest of the game.
- If you make a mistake, you can undo actions with the 'Q' key.
Things You Might Have Missed
- "You are stuck in a time loop" was also the general idea of LD27 Time Surge, there is a meta-theme interpretation where we are stuck in a gamedev loop.
- The subtitle "Clean Up Time" refers not only to that you (as a space janitor) have to clean up the messy ship, but also to the fact that you are cleaning up a spacetime accident (as a super extra bonus is also refers to us making a more technically challenging -- and clean -- game than Time Surge).
Known Bugs
- The game may run slowly when moving around. This eventually goes away, and I think it has to do with loading the music (if it's too bad on your computer, you can leave the game open -- but don't play -- for ~5 minutes, after that it shouldn't stutter).
Version History
Oct. 5, 2020 :: v1.0 - Jam release
Oct. 6, 2020 :: v1.0.1 - Fixed bug preventing music from looping, and playing at the end of the game (only in HTML5).
Walkthrough
If you got stuck, or maybe just hate playing games ^_^ http://youtu.be/AtFxCbWEb1k
| Youtube | https://hitchh1k3r.itch.io/time-surge-2-clean-up-time?secret=4Hv9Lx99o5srbHzJCDU6JM1Qo |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/time-surge-2-clean-up-time |
Ratings
| Overall | 669th | 3.591⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 717th | 3.409⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 396th | 3.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 533th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 936th | 3.413⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 617th | 3.386⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 829th | 2.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1001th | 3.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
The music and art are really good, and the Chronocore fluid shader looks really nice.
After I pressed Q, the Chronotoxin started to go back but there was a part that stayed still (This happend just once tho)
I failed a great number of times, but the game gave me the incentive to not give up and make it to the end. It's always satisfying to see one more green door lowered when you are taken back at the start, and one more, and so on.
It took a little time for me to understand how to use the "Mop", but it worked.
Shaders are fun, but it does not help to understand the specificities of objects. You have used the same rainbow-funny shading for all the time-related elements of the game, though these elements all behave differently :
- the Chronotoxin, wich makes you loop back in time,
- the Chrono Core fluid, which prevents objects to go back in time,
- The Chrono Core repair, which blocks the Chronotoxin propagation.
And the fact that we see these three game elements all together, at the very beginning of the game, does not help to understand. I do not know what better visual solution you could have used, but I am sure there may be one.
Music seems to strangely distort itself some times. Is it made on purpose to represent time distortion, or is it a problem performance related to WebGL ? Sometimes the game lags a little, but that may be my computer.
Just for fun, I put some Chrono Core fluid on a Chrono Core repair unit, and when the game looped back, the repair unit was not here ! The Chronotoxin propagates nearer to me, and I could have been stuck. Hopefully, I had just the time to remove the fluid. Is that a bug ?
Anyway, the game is great, and it is the entry on which I spent the longest time, so far.
I like the fact that you start in the same place every loop. It shows your progress very clearly and provides satisfying payoff when you can finally solve the puzzle you were confronted with the entire game.
Having to walk back to the puzzles, even the far away ones, got a little tedious. Some kind of checkpoint mechanic, so that time doesn't rewind all the way, could alleviate this and maybe even allow new kinds of puzzles.
I solved "Deeper Storage" by bringing some ChronoCore fluid from another part of the ship. If that's the intended solution, I like that you require that kind of thinking :) although I wonder which of the other puzzles could be broken using that method.
otherwise really cool game but it took very long for me to understand the mop mechanic
The rest was pretty enjoyable, I liked the concept and I loved how everything is one big connected space. The art and audio were nice.
I was a bit confused about my goal and the actual mechanics at first, the walkthrough video was quite handy in hinting the first steps.
I love the visuals, especially the sickly rainbow chronotoxin. Having the chronofluid to make objects "unstuck in time" to effect the next loop, and unlock things as you loop is awesome! (Also, is that a Slaughterhouse 5 reference?)
I think some visual feedback or indicator that you can pick up chronofluid with the mop would have been good, I didn't know what to do with it at first. All other objects interact just by pushing them or stepping on them, so the only way to know how to mop is by reading the directions which you should never count on players to do. If there had been some kind of visual feedback for the ability to mop up and put down the chronofluid, I think it would have been perfect!