Timemelters Blends Parallel Universes With Fantasy In A Challenging Real Time Strategy Game
Timemelters drops players in sixteenth century Scotland to battle scores of demons overrunning the land. It has a co-op mode, but even solo there’s help available. Players can summon their past selves. Of course, as a witch, players also get to cast spells and build obstacles. There are a myriad of ways to teleport and use the environment to your advantage. Rewind and then have a past version of yourself show up to save the day. This can be a real boon when finding yourself backed into a corner.
With all of the objects you can manipulate and spells available, playing sounds like a daunting task. There will be a lot of tutorials for a significant part of the gameplay. Though Timemelters has different modes and maps that give some complexity to its simple tower defense concept. The amount of tutorials feel necessary to understand the game instead of busywork. And this is a challenging game even with all the guides. Every enemy can one-shot Teagan. The spells she gets throughout the game will make her feel overpowered, until you get a humbling reminder.
Timemelters does have a story and offers two versions of it. An in-depth version with all the lore and backstory fans of narrative heavy games could want. As well as a more “striped down” version that allows players to get into the game quicker. This version still has quite a bit of story and doesn’t skip the most important moments. On top of the narrative option, there’s also puzzle and combat difficulty. So if a player isn’t great at one it doesn’t completely stop them from progressing. It truly makes this feel like players can shape what they experience each playthrough.
Timemelters is very much a struggle of trial and error. Do something different after rewinding and players could draw enemies in a different direction. Which means the past version of Teagan could miss all of her attacks. Yet the game manages not to feel unbeatable since you can easily see what exactly went wrong. Timemelters is complex without being entirely rigid and works within its historical fantasy setting.
