I was surrounded by a wave of alien bugs but I knew if I could just get the boss down, I had a fighting chance. Time Treker is fast-paced not giving you a moment of rest if you slip up. It got me slaying thousands of alien bugs till 6 AM without realizing the time.
Between the high-energy music to your screen being covered in every direction by enemies closing in on you. Time Treker has an amazing mix of shooting and blowing things up. Getting upgrades while out battling to the death. Along with some nice replayability every time you jump into a new timeline to fight aliens one more time.
You go into battle for four to five minutes trying to achieve the object and stay alive long enough to get teleported out. For me, that is the perfect amount of time to be in an intensive situation of blasting alien bugs away with the game music turned up to max. Then get a short break to make some upgrades and work out your next attack.
The first character you get to play is McNulty. He has a bigger focus on movement. Along with an energy dash move which saved me quite a few times in some hairy situations. He also starts with an autocannon as his main weapon.
Before jumping into my first timeline, I did some digging around to see what I could pick up about the game. I noticed you could buy some upgrades from starting with better attributes to having a shield.
To be able to get those upgrades you need tech points which are earned by completing different tasks. They have things like defeating X number of aliens to making upgrades to your weapon attachments.
My first timeline as they call an individual playthrough was quite a disaster. Right away I rather botched things and after that it became a bit hard to recover from. Even more so since I did not understand many of the basics. Learning them all the hard way quickly.
Even in that failure of not progressing that far. I still had a blast. Each time I'd return to another timeline to make another attempt it seemed I was discovering even further things that would make my next run even smoother.
You have a couple of different zone regions you need to progress though. They each have a main route that you have to at least attempt. Interestingly enough even if you fail a single point in the timeline, you can still advance. However, every failure brings you closer to disaster and the timeline failing. With a game over screen.
Each one also gives you a heads-up about what to expect. For those that love to min/max based on what activities you are about to engage with you could make out weapons lots or even make choices of which attributes you want to invest in next that might help you out the best for your next challenge.
The first one I got ended up just being a basic finish a light tower and a support pod. Then I just had to survive out the timer. Both of these require you to stand long enough in a circle till the timer is finished.
Later on, I would end up investing some tech points into speeding up how long it took for a support pod or light tower. I found standing around and not moving to be possibly the biggest danger to my success possible.
While the first timeline point is quite chill. I had a rather laughable defeat. Instead of moving around like I should have. I wanted to test the weapon I had and how it worked. So, I was only moving around with my energy move of the spacebar.
Despite that failure, it was not game over yet. I ended up picking up a chainsaw which I gave a short try before replacing it with a different weapon. I also made another attempt on the first timeline point. I could have just gone to the next one as well. Which would have been quite difficult having such a bad start as I did.
As you progress along you can spend crystals on unlocking further weapon slots and attachment slots for weapons. You can have six weapons equipped which is quite insane and makes things crazy once you get going.
There are seventeen weapons and thirty mod attachments for those weapons. You can use things like a laser rifle, gravity cannon, flamethrower, nitrogen sprayer, tesla gun, rocket launcher, and so many others.
Each timeline point starts at a slow to moderate rate. By the end of it, you are just hoping in the final sections to still be living once you have a zone region or two in. As things start to get rather wild.
After a few failures on my part in my first timeline I had one timeline point left before making it into the next zone region. You might also notice there are some question marks on the map as well.
While I did not need to run those question marks to advance onward, I quickly learned they were at least worth clicking on the construction domain. As it turns out they give you a bit of loot.
This is also when you start to learn the fate of what kind of challenge you will be facing for that point as well. You end up getting a couple of the rewards along with the challenge. Such rewards are things like crystals, weapons, mods, and most importantly relics.
While I was still learning the basics of the game, I'd construct domains as soon as they became unlocked just for the rewards. I’d then continue progressing along leaving them for a later point in time to attempt them.
Many of these construction domains can only be run once. So, it felt like it was best to leave this till I knew for sure I had quite a high chance of pulling off a win. Even more so if I had to take out a boss as those early on gave me quite the run for my crystals.
Such as this pair of bosses I attempted to take out with a chainsaw and a couple an autocannon. Thankfully there were not many adds to deal with while I was learning the kind of attack this kind of boss would end up doing. At the time I lacked the damage to take these down in the time given.
After a while, I hit my first timeline failure. I was on the edge of it happening for a few timeline points as the bar slowly progressed toward failure. While I did manage to claw back some of it. That only allowed me to get a little further. While I did not make it that far I learned a lot. More than enough to go quite the distance on my next attempt.
It was then time to claim my tech points and send the couple I got. While you can claim and spend tech points while working on a timeline. I just find it funnier to wait and do a mass claim at the end. As a nice little reward and reason for me to head back in running.
The second time around I did a lot better. I made sure to take advantage of any light towers I could find. Once these are active any alien within its light radius takes damage over time. On tougher points than this one, I'd try and find a close cluster of light towers and stand in the middle having them soften any aliens that were making their way towards me.
Most of the time I was moving around the map trying to avoid taking hits while also looking for something far more interesting than light towers. Those are support pods. Seems they can never come fast enough!
Support pods can be quite interesting. They usually drop some rather short-term buffs. Sometimes I've even risked almost getting killed just to get one. Then lucking out and being almost back to full health dealing insane amounts of damage. Other times I was not so lucky.
Every time you level up you get a choice at some random rewards. This tends to be my main way of getting relics, mod attachments, and weapons. Early on I just went for everything to try out different types of guns and attachments.
Once I worked out my playstyle for the character I was playing. I started to play things a bit smarter when it came to level-up rewards. You can blacklist a couple of items you no longer want to see dropped. You can also choose to save something to get it the next time around.
This cut down a bit on the number of items I was getting that I did not want. You can turn them into a small number of crystals. I’d rather just have the items I needed.
You also need to combine lower-level weapons and attachments to make them into higher-tier ones. Weapons go up to tier five and mods go up to tier three. There is quite a power difference between tier one and five when it comes to guns. So that tends to be something I now give a bit of a priority towards getting each one of the six weapons I'm using a couple of levels.
By my third timeline, things were starting to get a bit crazy. The situation seen above was not only nothing. I did not even feel like I was close to getting close. Things would also only get even more crazy from that moment onward.
Then there would start to be moments where I was not sure how I was getting out alive in any of them. Let alone doing things like making sure I got range kills. Since those range attackers liked to stand out of my usual damage range making them easy to miss.
It’s also around this part of the timeline in each run I've made where things just start to take off. I’m dodging, weaving, and dashing my way to safety. Half the time I'm just running for my life hopping for a support drop to help even the playing field for just seconds before I become overwhelmed with aliens attacking me yet again.
I had situations where I'd be dealing with four bosses at once. At least when it came to getting corruptions and giant spikers, I felt like I could deal with them. I ended up getting these into a group and just running laps around them.
When it comes to other boss combinations. I sometimes have to try and separate things the best I can. Just to get what damage I could before the other bosses would catch back up on me.
It was all not about just killing lots of aliens either. Sometimes I'd get the objective to destroy lots of their nests. While sure lots of aliens would come attacking me anytime I went after one of their nests.
It was quite fun just to stand in the middle of a giant cluster of them and offload all the damage I could. I usually try and put off doing these nest points for as long as I can. I’ve had so many ends with just seconds remaining and I'd take out the last nest I needed before getting teleported out. Far too many close calls that I want to think about.
After a while, a timeline would come to an end one way or another. Usually in my defeat. This is one of those games where I was more than thrilled to just jump back into another timeline and try it all over again. Even more so after claiming a large amount of tech points and putting points into things that will make the slight edge, I'd then have even a better run the next time around.
From my many failures, the high-energy music, and endless swarms of alien bugs. This was one of those games it was hard to put down. Anytime I think about writing about it the more I just want to go play it.
I can’t wait to see what else gets added to the game. This game is in early access. So, I could see them making a few balance changes. On the whole it was amazing. One of the better early-access games I've played in quite some time.
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Time Treker.
Disclosure: The game was in early access at the time of writing this.
Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.
