Tempus Bound

This game is a massive breath of fresh air and has been surprising at every turn. I've found so much satisfaction in figuring out what I need to do to progress to the next level. This game rewards players who want to explore, think for themselves, try things out, fail and try again. This style of gaming is my favourite. The environment, sound and artwork are absolutely gorgeous. I've even taken moments just to pause in certain areas just to listen to the sound, watch animations and take it all in. This is a beautifully detailed and extremely fun experience. I hope that Jasonsumm games will put out more games because this one has really sparked my imagination.

An artistic firework. It's basically a puzzle platformer you go through by feeling the art. It's hard to describe, you need to play it for yourself. Oh and my DualSense Controller rumbled pretty nicely. A very nice touch.

Really amazing art and atmosphere, some of the platforming is more frustrating than fun.

Excellent fun little game. Proper nostalgia kick for those of us growing up/started our gaming life in that 8-bit era. I almost wish I could have my old Sega Master System controller plugged in to play with! The feel of the game is nice, pacing is nice, audio is lovely and the simplicity of the control scheme is the cherry on top.

I’d describe this as a mysterious, cinematic journey with focus on awesome art & pixel lighting. The design is really strong, love that the different levels all have unique themes - very atmospheric. Nice amount of achievements to collect. Overall a treat for the eyes & ears, interested to see what this developer does next.

I will give this one a positive review, despite it not being my type of game. The retro art style with modern adaptions (light sources, interactability with object,...) is awesome. Controls work without issue (which is far from guaranteed in indie games) However, after about half an hour, I found myself annoyed by missing a jump, having to run aaaaaall the way back. Then, in the second level, got myself tracked under the tiltable bridge. Overall, the game is a bit "too noisy" for my taste - visual as well as the audio. On the positive note, I think this Dev put a lot of thought and love into this game and definitely deserves the support (thus I'm not refunding, keep the great work going!!!)

One of the great pleasures of gaming is finding single developer games like Tempus Bound, which are often priced fairly enough to dive in blindly. It's at times like these that I wish Steam had a more nuanced recommendation system. Because, ultimately, despite some frustrations which I'll break down below, I would recommend Jason's game to a certain type of player. For those that like esoteric platform/adventure games ala Animal Well, and have empathy for the harrowing path that is game development, Tempus Bound is a curious experiment in short-form gaming from a developer whose still getting their chops. For a player who can suss out some physic quirks of the game more quickly than I, Tempus Bound runs about an hour. I struggled with certain sections - namely the initial disappearing mushrooms and the rotating glass orbs. The Game Boy Color graphic/art style can look quite nifty when walking about in forests and swamps, but for tasks/puzzles that require some discernment, some objects can feel overly-detailed for a low-res style such as this, and thus, appear more confusing than they need to be. For instance, when rotating the glass orbs, I wasn't sure how they had to be aligned simply because the detail made it seem like one side was different from the other... something I'm really not quite sure was the case as I eventually just rotated them enough to solve the puzzle. Having said that, the way the foreground and background are utilized in this style lends to the depth of the world that's being explored, giving us plenty of fun little animations and landscape details, allowing for a relatively short experience to feel immense. Tempus Bound may feel clunky at times - case in point, I wouldn't recommend trying to break/edge the game as you can get stuck and have to restart - but the personality of the game shines through, and at $4 I'm more than happy to support an upstart developer in order to encourage them to create more games. Congratulations, Jason. I look forward to what comes next!

Pros: - great art, clearly a lot of effort was put into the way this game looks - simple and straight-forward gameplay - walk right until you can't, then backtrack and find a new way to go right - short and sweet - cute large creatures - phrog Cons: - the physics - jumping over the tip of a hill and landing on the slope sends you sliding down like you weigh a ton - the physics again - the mushrooms are quite inconsistent with how far they send you (in my experience) - the physics? - sometimes your character reaches such high speeds that he's out of frame - not a fan of [spoiler]the jumpscares [/spoiler]they feel like the dev trying to be cheeky but the game just doesn't quite have the atmosphere for that to work imo. Overall I'd still recommend this game, I want to see this dev flourish, either independently or get picked up by a team. They've got a good eye for character/world design, but I want to see them improve their craft.