Posted on: December 1, 2021
Azrigar
Games: 83 Reviews: 2
Gem from my youth
Ok, look... I see the screenshots the same as you. I know by today's standards, this is kinda janky. However, I played this game in middle school and have such a fondness for it, I had to leap on reviewing it. The story is inventive and the setting is really interesting. The puzzles are generally in a sweet spot of making sense without devolving into the gratuitous moon logic some adventure games spiraled into during that genre's downfall in the 90s (with an exception that's explicitly on purpose and is signposted in-game due to that pocket universe being explicitly nonsensical. I promise it makes more sense in-game, but it might be the more annoying world. Think Alice in Wonderland or Animaniacs levels of "physics doesn't exactly work here, just go with it"). I'm getting ahead of myself. The general premise is that there are those in the distant future who can create "pocket universes". These function as a sort of parallel universe with a setting, occupants, and even rules of physics that are all designed by their creator. They can be very earthlike or very... not. Several of these have been thrown into stasis, freezing their entire universe and their inhabitants in time. You need to enter them and un-freeze them by interacting with each universe's McGuffin that acts as it's main control center. In addition to the standard point-and-click affair of picking up random stuff and combining it or applying it to the world in some way, you also have your multitool that is shaped by the physics of the world. However, the marquee is Bottled Time. It's what allows you to move freely in a universe stuck in stasis (as well as anyone/thing you stand directly beside), but it also allows you to unfreeze items at a distance if you toss a ball of the stuff at the object. This leads to some interesting puzzle solving opportunities. Just don't run out... or walk under a falling rock.
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