Tempus Bound

Vibes! A short but immersive and enjoyable experience that doesn't overstay its welcome. Beautiful art direction - I'd love to have more to do in the worlds. Or revisit it in another game! I managed to get stuck inbetween some rotating platforms in the 2nd world after running away from the thing... Only other thing I'd mention is I'd like the character to have a slightly more generous jumping distance...but perhaps I should "git gud"? Hugely impressive work, congrats man.

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.

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!!!)

Chouette aventure proche d'un court métrage en pixel art. Un monde fourmillant de vie qui vous happe du début la fin. Il y a les jeux poétiques et il y a les jeux qui sont de la poésie qui rime 24 fois par seconde comme Tempus Bound. Un ovni à faire pour tous ceux qui cherchent un peu de bizarrerie dans le jeu indé. Jingle bells, jingle all the way

É bom!

Um jogo único, muito lindo e surrealista, porem bastante curto.

what a fantastic indie gem. This is right up my ally! loved the pixel art & animations the atmosphere was fantastic, the use of lighting was great 100% recommending this gem of a game

I haven't played a ton yet but holy crap does this game have a great art style. I really love the visual aesthetic of it; reminds me of older GameBoy games mixed with the Ori games. While i'm not totally sure where I'm going, I am loving the journey. Really incredible work.

The first element of Tempus Bound that jumped out to me was the visual style, perfectly capturing that 8-bit aesthetically not just in the graphics themselves but in the subtle way it builds the world it takes place in, the mystery, feeling as though you're a small cog in a massive machine. It was like being transported back to being a child and being overcome with these feelings of wonder and adventure. Controls are tight and responsive for the most part, with the only little issue I had being the camera itself during certain platforming section (although this is admittedly a minor nitpick), with everything moving along at a good pace that any issues I had were pushed to the back of my mind. I really enjoyed the time I spent playing it and, honestly, wasn't really ready for it to be over and done... until I spotted the allusion to potentially a loop as it were, meaning there's more story for me to unravel. If this at all sounds appetising to you, then it's certainly worth the £4.39.