Time Manipulation in Game Design

Time Manipulation in Games

Introduction

The gameplay mechanic that I wish I had come up with first, is Time Manipulation. This is includes the concept of time dilation and the reversal of time in games.

Implementing the Manipulation of Time

Time manipulation is a robust mechanic. It involves non-exploitable time manipulation, with the goal of being fast and smooth, while not computationally-taxing on memory or hardware resources.

The best way to implement this mechanic can be seen in Braid - an indie platform and puzzle game, developed by Number None, Inc. In this game, the world state is recorded for every frame, where the data is stored and compressed. With the recorded frames, any changing entities are extracted and mixed into the final state, which can be manipulated or rewound by the player.

The player’s position is recorded and other properties such as color and rotation are stored as an integer that can be reconstructed, along with time information taken from the frame.

Use In-Game

Conversely, interactive narratives such as Life is Strange - an episodic graphic-adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment - place a limit, as to how far the player can rewind.

In this game, the time reversal mechanic ties heavily into the narrative. For instance, if there is an important decision that needs to be made that will have dire consequences later in the game, the player can explore all of their options first - before they make that choice. He or she can select one option and rewind to the beginning of that conversation to preview the other choices, before making a decision.

Furthermore, with these games, you don’t want the experience of the in-game puzzles to be exploited, where the challenge can be severely reduced by this feature. For example, in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - a third-person action-adventure, puzzle-platform game - if the puzzle’s objective is to get from point A to point B, the player can attempt the puzzle and if they fall from the platform, then they can rewind to repeat that section.

This is in contrast to Life is Strange, where the player’s position is not at all affected by time reversal. In a similar puzzle, if there is an obstacle flying at the player while they are moving towards a point, when they go to reverse time they will stay in the same place, to effectively evade it.