Time To Walk Alone is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This shovelware platformer is distinct because it uses the "blind" gimmick, that is to say you don't see the elements of the level until you get near them. This is popular amongst lazy developers because players spend more time going through each level learning the map, so they don't have to spend as much time doing the actual job of game developers and making plenty of content and doing level design.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The implementation here is of such poor quality, the developer couldn't work out how to make the game display in fullscreen, it only runs in a window.
Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop the music using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is often used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Time To Walk Alone is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
