An indie game can’t survive just by being quirky and
weird. Indies also can’t push uber
oldschool hardcore difficulty as a main feature if the controls and core
gameplay aren’t good enough. No Time To
Explain commits both of these sins. Its
only redeeming factor is that it is weird and that just isn’t enough when the
gameplay is so aggressively and extremely not fun. There’s No Time To Explain, but read our review anyway. Game Details
- Publisher: tinyBuild Games
- Developer: tinyBuild Games
- ESRB Rating: “T” for Teen
- Genre: 2D Platformer
- Pros: Quirky story; presentation; co-op
- Cons: Awful boss fights; controls aren’t precise enough; crazy difficulty; not fun
- MSRP: $15
Your character from the future bursts into the house of your
character in the present, shouts “I am you from the future. There’s no time to explain. Follow me to …” and is then carried off by a
giant crab. What’s the deal with the
crab? And the aliens? And sharks?
Don’t worry about any of that.
Just go.
No Time To Explain is a 2D platformer using the extremely
tired and obnoxious indie game design philosophy of “ultra crazy hardcore
difficulty = fun””. The game uses
different weapons to propel your character through various trap-filled
levels. You start with a beam cannon
that acts as sort of a jet pack, but eventually move on to shotguns and other
crazier weapons as the game progresses.
The game regularly gives you new toys to play with and then a couple of
levels to learn how to use them before having you fight a boss. The levels are generally short with one real
platforming puzzle to get through before you hop into a portal and move on to
the next one.
The game is difficult, though. Like, crazy stupid difficult.
You always restart on the last solid ground your character was standing
on, so you never lose very much progress, but the constant deaths end up being
very frustrating very quickly because the game just flat out doesn’t play very
well. You move your character with the
left stick and shoot in any direction with the right stick to propel yourself
around. The levels require far more
precision than the controls – particularly when you have to use the beam cannon
- can offer, however. You usually die
because the controls are random and imprecise, not because you did something
wrong, and that sucks. It isn’t
fun. The levels that give you the other
weapons and abilities are generally easier to control than the beam cannon, but
that damn beam cannon makes up by far the majority of what you do.
As if the platforming sections weren’t bad enough, the boss
fights in No Time To Explain are just the absolute pits. The boss fights suck because your weapon is
your only means of propulsion as well as your only way to attack and balancing
those two things are not something the game does particularly well. The boss fights always take place in the
most awkward areas possible where trying to avoid insta-death environmental
hazards occupies your attention and effort as much as the rampaging boss itself
does. There’s just too much crap going
on all at once and, as we mentioned above, the so-so controls just don’t
provide you with enough control to keep up.
It ain’t fun.
I’m not saying the game is impossibly difficult or
anything. You can definitely spend enough
time with it that you get used to the wonky controls and BS boss fights and
learn how to pass through it all with ease, but it isn’t a very fun or
rewarding experience. The game seems
largely based on luck and randomness, especially early on, and you’ll probably
just get bored and / or frustrated long before your skill level builds enough
that you can overcome the randomness.
The one bright spot is the local co-op option with up to
four players. The controls are still
wonky and clunky and the game is still difficult, but pushing friends off of
ledges and doing silly stuff can be pretty fun and funny for a while. Having more people also makes the boss
fights better since you can grind through them faster. It also gives you a good opportunity to use
the dance button. Yes, there is a
button dedicated only to busting out sweet dance moves.
The presentation is also pretty decent in No Time To Explain
with lots of bright colors and everything is nice and clean so you know exactly
what to do and where to go. The sound
is also solid with particularly good weapon sound effects.
Ultimately, No Time To Explain simply doesn’t do
enough to differentiate itself from the huge crowd of uber difficult 2D
platformers already flooding the market.
These sorts of games are supposed to be satisfying because you have a
sense of growth and accomplishment as your skills improve, which is why you
keep coming back even when you die a lot.
No Time To Explain doesn’t make you feel that way nearly often
enough. Instead you feel like things
are out of your control more often than not, which just leads to frustration
instead of satisfaction. I’ll say it
again – It just ain’t fun. Maybe give
it a look if you have particularly masochistic friends to play co-op with, but
I can’t recommend it otherwise.
Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.
