Genre: Time travel roguelike
Developer: Fuse Game
Publisher: Leyo Games, 2P Games
Release Date: July 9th, 2024
Edited by AlexKnight2005
Time Treker is an early-access rouge-lite game with survivor elements from the developers at Fuse Game. The overall theme is Sci-Fi. The game revolves around time traveling in your mech to stop the alien bug menace that has taken over the Earth before it can fully happen. You can select one of three pilots currently in the game to play, two of which you have to unlock from various actions. Without more preamble, let’s dive into the game specifics.
First, let’s cover graphics and audio since they are the most straightforward topics. The game has a pixel art style, which is another middle-of-the-pack style. It’s good but could be better. The menus and UI look great, but the players’ models, weapons, and enemies could use more polish. The music is entirely instrumental, and the only thing I found about the sound effects and music that I would change is when the enemies die, if they have a splat or splorch sound effect. Everything else is aces to me.
Now, let’s discuss gameplay mechanics, which have many details. Let’s start with the character selection screen. When you select a character, it shows their unique ability and stats. The stats are Survival, Combat, Agility, and Focus. Each affects five different things except for focus, which affects eight. This ranges from your max HP and energy and their regeneration to your pickup radius. In between stages on a run, you can upgrade these with the currency you get from some of the bugs you kill.
Also, on character select, there is the Data Center, where you can earn tech points to spend on talents in the research center. You earn points for doing things like killing x number of enemies in a run or fully upgrading x number of weapons, and there is a lot more. The research hub is split into three trees—one for the hero, weapons, and upgrades, and one for utility. It ranges from increasing starting stats to initial weapon level and even exp gain.
This is all before going to the map and selecting the level. Like I said, there are a lot of details. Now, a lot is going on on the map or level selection. In addition to upgrading stats on screen, there are the Impact and Rish level meters and a display of all your current weapons and upgrades for them. Now, where is where things get interesting? At each level, you have missions like kill x amount of this or activate x amount of these. Most of them have two of them. If you fail the missions, the risk level will be raised.
If you complete them and last until the timer rubs out, you raise your impact level, earning you rewards. However, if you pass the missions and die, it goes towards the risk level. Now, they allow you to go back and redo the level instead of completely locking it out if you fail. You get one free chance to redo, and after that, you have to pay with the game’s currency to redo. There is an exception to these levels, specifically the construction ones. You can’t return to redo the level if you fail.
Other than this, the game plays just like a survivor-style game. As you kill enemies in the levels you, you get exp. When you level up, you get a random selection of three different relics, weapons, powerups, or weapon modifiers. You get a free reroll per level, and past that costs currency. You can also ban things to keep up to five items from showing up at future level-ups. Oh, I just remembered to mention one thing. You have weapon slots, each with four modifier slots, and you have to pay currency except for your starting weapon and the second weapon slot to unlock. The modifier slots only the starting gun has them fully unlocked.
So, is Time Treker worth it? Yes, especially for the 7$ price tag right now on Steam. You will definitely get your money’s worth out of this timey, whimsy sci-fi game. It is also bundled on Steam with other games, so check them out. You may find a gem to go along with this one.
