Time Treker wasn’t an easy game for me to judge. In fact, after my first hour with the title, I felt certain that it simply wasn’t for me... until it was. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s actually talk about what it even is. Well, Time Treker is a bullet heaven game with roguelike elements, where you basically enter a series of levels and continue shooting at increasingly larger swarms of approaching enemies – meanwhile, you collect upgrades and weapons, gradually increasing your firepower and your efficiency in mowing down the hundreds upon hundreds of critters hoping to tear you to bits. Then you go the next level and do the same. Rinse and repeat. Think Vampire Survivors, but with cutesy pixel art and anime-style characters in a sci-fi setting. But then why did I find Time Treker so difficult to get into at first? Let’s find out.
We heard you like upgrades
Essentially, if I wanted to really break it down, I’d say Time Treker is about finding the right combination of upgrades to wreak havoc across a level. The fundamentals are all in place: the crystals you collect by playing missions can be spent on unlocking more weapon slots, allowing you to wield several (four, five or even six) instruments of death at the same time, thus increasing your effective firepower. Each weapon also comes with multiple customization slots that can be filled out by a variety of modifiers that all grant passive bonuses – increased damage, a slowing ice effect, added knockdown efficiency, making enemies explode when they die, you name it. Every time you level up, you can also pick one from a selection of three random upgrades or weapons, like in most roguelikes. Got some duplicates in your inventory? Worry not, just combine them – for example, take two Level 1 Rocket Launchers and merge them into a Level 2 Rocket Launcher. Easy. This kind of method works for passive upgrades as well: in essence, the more duplicates you collect, the stronger you’ll become, which is more or less at the heart of Time Treker’s gameplay and progression system.
Failing upwards
It's all random, mind you. You can sort of influence the process by making certain upgrades not appear again, or by spending crystals to re-roll and get a new set of upgrades to choose from at level ups, but at the end of the day, you are pretty much at the whims of the great, glorious RNG machine. Which, as you might imagine, is a bit of a double-edged sword. It keeps things fresh for sure, but it also places you at the mercy of random upgrades, and if you don’t get the right ones, well... it might just cost you a run. Which brings me to my next point: my first hour with the game was immensely frustrating, and consisted of me failing mission after mission due to being severely under-geared against an increasingly more savage enemy force. When you get killed on a level, you are automatically booted out and forced to continue on to the next one, which obviously ramps up the difficulty and the number of enemies, but without enough upgrades and weapons, you can easily find yourself falling behind. Seeing objectives like “defeat 1600 monsters” when I’m struggling to even survive the first minute of a level felt super demotivating, but on the flip side, continuing to die and getting Game Over’d isn’t really the end of the world, either. You can collect additional resources even if you fail, then spend them on permanent upgrades to make you start stronger in each run, thus increasing your chances of... failing less in the future. And when you actually unlock some good weapons and modifiers, the game feels immensely fun – once I unlocked a new character (who felt way better to me than the default guy you’re forced to use at the beginning), got my hands on several upgraded rocket launchers, gave myself extra shields and made it so each shot could potentially heal me, levels suddenly felt less daunting and more enjoyable. I even managed to kill a boss, which would’ve been impossible earlier.
So, is it good?
Well, yes. Sort of. I’m happy and relieved to say that when it actually gets going, Time Treker is a flashy, addictive and explosion-heavy bullet heaven game with a healthy lineup of customization options and a solid variety of weapons, ranging from classic rocket launchers and chainsaws to automatic laser beams and even guns that generate mini black holes. Upgrading really is the name of the game here, as you’re very much expected to wield several fully decked-out and modified weapons to even stand a chance at completing later missions – if you don’t go in prepared, or end up drawing the short end of the stick when it comes to getting your gifts from RNG Santa Claus, you’re going to have a bad time, as the randomness of the roguelike elements can lead to frequent frustrations and failed runs. My advice: just keep at it and with some luck, you’ll have fun. Eventually.
Time Treker is currently available on Steam Early Access.