Timewell: Trail of Celestes

[h1]Introduction[/h1] Humanity’s last hope for a new home is an Artificial Intelligence constantly misled by cryptic alien messages. Nothing wrong with that at all. Or is it? I consider it a rocky start as far as Steam debuts go, but developer OZBER CIN has certainly poured heart and soul into this self-published project that has some nice ideas at its core, before it all gets unraveled by poor execution. I’ve never seen a more on-rails SciFi experience without actually being on-rails. It’s not Rambo: The Video Game in space, fear not. But perhaps it could have been a meme treasure trove under those circumstances. Not a saving grace in sight though. [h1]Story [/h1] The game’s intro sequence is pretty much the whole story condensed in a straightforward manner. By the 32nd century, Earth has finally had enough with humans and it tries a hard reset which I am actually predicting to occur far sooner than that. Two centuries from now, give or take. I’m probably too optimistic here. Anyway, we see a focus on South America and that’s a welcomed change from the more ubiquitous North America, courtesy of Hollyweird. Megacorporations have built an AI capable of deep space exploration, fully integrated into a recon vessel that’s still armed to the teeth. Diplomacy failed before it even had a chance. And why leave humanity’s future in the hands of obviously self-aware AI? Lady Skynet could just go radio silent, provided she can even send reports back on Earth in the first place. What happens next is kinda pulled out of Mass Effect minus the intriguing bits: alien tech draws the attention of a sentient race of genocidal machines which are hellbent on stopping our intrepid digital heroine (a female avatar, Sat-V). The antagonists are discount Reapers called Constructs, but equally shifty is the suspiciously helpful alien going by a collective nickname of Celeste. “I am Legion, for we are many”. Not a bad start, albeit not very original. If only it would have been more fleshed out, like showing Sat-V’s departure from Earth or at least more information relating to its creators. We’re just thrown in the thick of it, in the middle of an asteroid field. It's a rapidly deteriorating situation and without further explanation. The titular timewells are jump gates across predetermined locations. Mass Relays by any other name… https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2863992561 [h1]Graphics[/h1] Advertised as an Unreal Engine 4 project, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for Unreal Engine 3 instead. The first cracks on Timewell: Trail of Celestes proverbial surface begin to show up at its performance level. For some inexplicable reason, the game is locked at 45fps no matter how much you may try to fiddle with the in-game options or outside of them (Nvidia Control Panel was of no use in this case). Even the cheapest consoles today can push solid 60fps, so 45 frames per second are unacceptable for a 2022 Steam release. The few exceptions are reserved for older titles such as LA Noire, whose facial animations were hard-coded for 30fps. As if performance wasn’t locked in an immovable state already, the intrusive HUD cannot be disabled to mimic the arguably beautiful images shown on the game’s Steam Store page. Nevermind a Free Camera / Photo Mode which might provide side and frontal views of the ship. Perspective follows the backside thrusters at all times, so it’s a fixed camera with eye-sore HUD elements that can only be partially hidden in the lower side of the screen. System-wise, this game won’t put a strain on any PC assembled in the past decade. Unlocking the frame rate and offering V-sync are things we seem to take for granted though. Timewell disagrees. [h1]Audio[/h1] There’s voice acting, yet I won’t dwell a lot on its quality. Consider it phoned in, with the enthusiasm of someone who clearly wasn’t pleased with their paycheck. The infamous Dinklebot from the first Destiny showed more emotion than Sat-V. Don’t even get me started on the growls and hisses made by the aliens. Soundtrack was the equivalent of elevator music, but I am already used with this, so I muted them without a second thought and just kickstarted my own playlist. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2863992540 [h1]Gameplay[/h1] When I say faux on-rails, I mean it. Imagine a space ship which can’t ascend or descend, it simply files at a fixed altitude at all times. It’s bound to hit obstacles eventually, right? And I don’t mean the invisible walls of the level design. Those are annoying enough as it is. For a title which emphasizes on space exploration, there’s alarmingly little of that in Timewell. No open world, not even large open levels or a a map that could allow custom waypoints. Between the shooting galleries consisting of a few Construct enemy types, you’re given a scanning option for points of interest. No mini games, fortunately. Just some hovering drones which serve only this auxiliary role outside combat. The weapon upgrades counterbalance the overall arcade feel. The limiting levels I could compare to the first entries in the submarine-based Aquanox series, since I have no recollection of an outer space project with such location restrictions in place. And even those aforementioned submarines could ascend and descend, in retail releases from two decades ago. The silent tutorial has an interesting design in terms of its static instruction panels. And the Skirmish mode is mercifully sparing us of trodding through the linear progression of that flimsy storyline. Instead, we can jump right in those shooting sections across 8 levels. One of them is called “Planet Xibalba”, so the Mesoamerican mythology links nicely with the game’s narrative attempts in spite of the end results. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2863992584 [h1]Verdict[/h1] The final nail in Timewell: Trail of Celestes’ coffin, has to be the pricing which is by no means reflected in the delivered product. I had to “power through” the last couple of hours in this game, since I had pretty much already seen its potential within the first 30 minutes. For the average player whose attention span is much lower than my patience, this can only spell disaster for a project that’s clearly not meant to be a lazy cash grab. It’s not low effort, just the result of inexperience and lack of a development team capable of applying division of labour. While the performance can probably be tweaked and the fps increased to the “golden standard” of 60, I doubt the vessel controls can further allow for the spatial freedom they deserve. At the very least this is a lesson from which I can only hope OZBER CIN will learn and apply to a future project. [h1]Strong Points[/h1] + Steam Achievements. + Sense of progression through upgrades. [h1]Weak Points[/h1] - Restrictive level design, no exploration. - No Steam Trading Cards. - Weird frame rate lock. - Stiff controls. [quote]This article was submitted for [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews]Imperial Reviews[/url]. Following my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/25802515-Imperial-Reviews/]Curator Page[/url], will help me keep publishing new reviews as soon as I can. Thank you for your support![/quote]

If you like space shooters this is a great game, environment and designs are real nice. This is fun to play PVE game, I hope there will be a multiplayer option (either coop or vs battle) in the future.

Great work guys! The environment is very cool. You captured the feeling of being in space beautifully. Congratulations again, I'm looking forward to the next project.

We are mysteriously moving forward in the game that we started with curiosity.

I generally like this kind of shooter games. But the story, mood with all colors, music and the landscape captures you. I strongly recommend this game to everyone to enjoy their limited time with fun. Cognratulations guys, I think you did a good job.

I recommend this game definitely. I liked the game. I'm not big fan of shooting type games but this has an interesting story. It kind of drew me into the game and made me want to play more. It is easy to learn the controls. I especially liked "the dodge mechanism". Only downside for me is I couldn't find the skip conversation or intro key. I understand the developers put great effort and they want you to enjoy it as much as possible but the Celeste guy is painfully slow. You accomplish an objective but the next objective comes a little bit late. If they can add a key to skip or make those go faster , this game can be my favourite. Give it a try, you'll like it.

I can really tell the devs poured their souls into this game. From the mechanics to the combat and even the scenery. The scenery itself is what made me go "WOW!" this is pretty good! I really only have one major complaint in that the dialogue is a little loud and brings the game play to a grinding halt as you can't really progress until the characters stop talking. Other than that I liked the style of gameplay as it's 3rd person bullet hell-like combat reminded me a bit of NieR:Automata. Hope more people see this game and give it a shot!

I've just started to play. However gameplay is fluent and the story is perfect! God job!

Launched to early I tried the game and had to stop because portions of the dialogue sound like they are just copying the script. In addition using a Text to speech device for the main character is not a good look for a released game.

Good old fashioned space shooter with high-quality features and captivating missions. You will be fighting much of the time, and there are many different methods to do it. You are motivated to upgrade your spacecraft via skills and adaptations (RPG features), and you are guided by the mission system. The story is flowing and making you wonder about what is next in the corner.