T.I.M.E

Tactical Interval Military Experiment

A ONE VERSUS ONE arena shooter set in a dystopian brutalist interior that changes how you think about your actions!

Sift through previous events and decide where it all went wrong to rectify it next round!
Different Power Weapons and Power Ups are chosen every round in put in play!
Jetpack, Slide and Bounce around to dodge away from, or even toward your enemy!

STEAM

Team members on the project:

Elliot Hayward (Designer) - me
Monty Martin-Weber (Designer)
John Pelkman (Programmer)
Matthew Carver (Programmer)
Vivian Li (Artist)
Ash Purnell (Artist)

Features & Pillars

Core Pillars:

Learn
- Using the rewind mechanic really allows players to change the outcome of a round.
Flow
- Fluid movement and gunplay.
Mastery
- Easy to learn, hard to master.

Main Features:

Weapon Sandbox:
- 8 Weapons with unique roles in the sandbox to allow for dynamic changes to meta gameplay.
- 5 Power-Ups that also support unique changes in play that can change a fight in a moment.
Rewind:
- The rewind system captures the player’s actions throughout the rounds. When a player loses the round they are given the opportunity to scrub through all the events that have occurred and select where the next round starts from. This whole system is inspired to let player’s who think they know why they lost, try again with that change in strategy.

Design Process

The concept of the game combined with the actual system design which brought my vision into a reality is something I am immensely proud. I am very proud of the team and our execution.

Some key things helped shaped the concept and its ensuing systems came from;

My enjoyment of Arena Shooters
Competitive multiplayer experiences and balancing
The nature of regret
Our individual views on revisionism.

Arena Shooters:

Arena shooters offer a different take on FPS’s that modern shooters have. They are typically focused around Map rotation for power-ups and weapons, fast movement, varied weapon roles. They sub-genre blends both strategic thought and second-to-second instinctive actions into an action-packed genre.

Balance:

Balance IS the most important aspect of multiplayer experiences. This doesn’t mean it is to be focused on a 50% win-rate probability but rather, allowing room for choice and expression with the majority determining factor in the player’s control. This meant analyzing the Venn Diagram of balance in shooters. Movement, Weapons, Level Design.
Each one of these effects the other and the aim always needs to be focusing on each encourage skill expression.

Regret:

Every person who has attempted something, regardless of if it is a game or not, who fails in that attempt deals with this emotion. It is the classic “If only…” that drives this game’s experience. By creating an experience where the player is given the tools to review what went wrong and choose for themselves what they would change. Allowing player’s to choose where things went wrong additionally removes aspects of ‘luck’ being the reason for fault.

Individual views:

Every person has their own perspective on and context that they bring to situations and experiences. That is why it was crucial that this was done in a multiplayer setting against another person. Both people can solve problems differently and then test them with immediate effect.

Time travel in all other mediums are naturally contrived, they lacks dynamism that the medium of multiplayer games can create.