Timespinner (Switch)
When you first start to play Timespinner, it might seem deceptively unoriginal. The plot gets off to a seemingly generic start when a peaceful clan is attacked by an evil emperor and his forces, and when you start to play the game and see things like the back dash and familiars, it’s pretty clear that this exploration-focused platformer is drawing heavily from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. In fact, at the time of writing, even the Wikipedia page calls it an outright clone of that popular Metroidvania. However, there is definitely more going on under the surface of Timespinner once you really start to truly explore its game world.
Timespinner’s plot does start with what seems like a fairly generic set-up. The Timespinner is a time-traveling device protected by a noble clan of people on the planet Winderia, with certain members of the clan like the protagonist Lunais dedicating their lives to ensuring it never falls into the hands of anyone evil. When the Lachiem empire attacks the clan, Lunais and her mother Selen try to use the Timespinner to head in the past and prevent its capture, but Selen is killed and the damaged Timespinner throws Lunais off course. Rather than landing in the past of her planet, she finds herself on the Lachiem home world. Gifted by the damaged device with the ability to stop time briefly and travel between the past and present of the empire’s homeworld, Lunais sets off to repair the Timespinner and get revenge for what the Lachiem Empire did to her people.
At first, this does seem like the extent of the adventure, but when you travel to Lachiem’s past, you begin to find out the empire is much more nuanced than first expected. You encounter some of the first people to arrive on the planet who will set up what will one day become the society that stood against yours, and reading paperwork in the present will reveal the many different motives of the higher-ups in the empire that go much deeper than something as generic as conquest. The morality of your quest for revenge and your perception of your enemy evolves as you uncover the things that cause the conflicts have many more shades of gray than first expected, and much of this is fed into by the sidequests and interactions in the past where your subtle influence can start pushing the future to be a bit better. It is a bit of a shame that the character development and world-building is often tied to searching around secret areas or interacting with some side quests that are often as generic as killing a certain amount of monsters or finding items around the world, but the extra layers added to the narrative through doing so are worth it and add some appreciated complexity and emotion to the game’s plot.
When it comes to the gameplay though, it’s not quite as much of a departure from its inspirations as one might hope. Gorgeous spritework and backgrounds do help the game have its own visual identity, but the Metroidvania elements aren’t really trying to stand out from the crowd. Luckily, imitating genre staples usually means you’re assured some degree of quality. The past and present of Lachiem are decently sized maps that open up at a good pace. The time travel gimmick does mean a few areas copy their architecture between time periods, but at other points something in the past could be a castle for instance while its modern counterpart is a lab filled with futuristic technology. The underground caves in one time might be filled with life while they’re ruins in the other, and as you unlock more new abilities like being able to double jump or move underwater, areas in previous locations open up to expand the map both for forward progress and for finding hidden treasures and areas. Despite standing out when juxtaposed against their alternate time period versions, Timespinner’s areas can feel a little like generic sci-fi or fantasy settings, but you’ll still be able to recognize and learn the layout of places for the necessary backtracking to go easily, the teleportation system and save point placement generous enough to make fast travel easy and checkpointing a non-issue.
Lunais’s special gift to stop time might seem like it’s going to be a pivotal gimmick at first, but it gets less play than you might expect. For navigation, you can sometimes freeze a foe in place and leap off of them like a platform, getting to special areas early on if you can do this right. In combat, it can be used to buy you time as well, some bosses in particular having attacks that would be unfair or near impossible to dodge if you didn’t have this skill in your back pocket. It requires sand to use as a limit on how long time can be stopped, but it feels like a skill that will fade into the background for a quite a while before another situation seems to directly ask for it or inspire its use with its difficulty. Most of the bosses in the game are very easy to dispatch, something it admittedly has in common with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but the difference seems to be that the regular enemies carry a lot of the work in the older game. Timespinner has some bothersome enemies like durable slimes and creatures that can poison you, but save points aren’t too hard to reach here for a free health restore. Projectile enemies or ones with charge attacks and odd positioning can prove to be a bit more challenging to deal with, mechanical spiders who crawl on the ceiling keeping you at bay with a laser beam, gargoyles speeding at you when you aggravate them, and mages firing magic at you if you can’t reach them in time. There’s enough basic pressure and little places to explore to keep the regular play active even if it’s not asking much of the player, so it thankfully never becomes outright dull.
Lunais’s attacks mostly consist of her cycling a pair of two orbs in a forward punching motion that goes beyond her body’s reach. Some of these simply send the orb forward to deal damage, but others will briefly turn into full on swords or hammers to dish out their damage. These orbs can come in different elements with extra properties applied to them like leaving a foe burning or recovering a tiny amount of your health on hit, and further equipment can go towards changing your special attack executed when charging them. Using a magic meter, you can execute one of a variety of special abilities such as magic bursts or much larger versions of your weapon orbs, and while these are good for heavy damage, the bosses are, again, not so demanding these feel all that necessary. This can likely be a result of leveling up and getting new, better equipment over the adventure, but fights can still feel like you’re leaping around and using time stopping as necessary to easily score damage on large foes like the mechanical cat or giant bird. Humanoid opponents pop up and are a bit more mobile and dangerous, but they still can’t hold a candle to a properly upgraded character or a player with decent dodge sense. Even the final bosses don’t feel too substantial, and while the game has multiple endings, you can thankfully get most of them on the save file and probably should try for it to get more from the story and exploration sides of the adventure.
THE VERDICT: With a weaker story, Timespinner might have been a lesser game, but there’s still enough going on in the action that it holds up its side of the adventure. Finding a new area and facing new enemies is still interesting, especially early on when your power level means heading into certain areas might have you up against foes who really do put up a fight, but the new abilities and time stop don’t really help the regular play rise above being average. It feels like a Metroidvania that is implementing ideas popular for the genre but offering very little beyond those standard effective design elements. A complex plot with engaging lore and characters helps it become more than its generic action at least, and the context the narrative and world lend to everything means Timespinner still comes out to be an enjoyable experience in spite of the easy combat and often straightforward exploration.
And so, I give Timespinner for Nintendo Switch…
A GOOD rating. While Timespinner does offer a lot of the usual rewards for exploring its nooks and crannies such as health upgrades or new items, its the hidden parts of its lore and the continued development of its story that motivates the continued travels to the past and present. Something that seems to start off incredibly generic soon reveals a narrative with some impressive depth and fleshed out characters, the goal of your adventure far more complex in the end than a simple search for revenge. The gameplay, sadly, never really emerges from the shadow of the older game it is clearly copying, and while it can make the world you explore look beautiful, it doesn’t have the degree of polish to make exploring it satisfying mechanically. Enemies and bosses too often fail to put up a good fight, but they’re never so plain or weak that they’ll deter a player from uncovering the secrets of the world. Save room placements and teleportation options put convenience over challenge and allow for it to still remain a manageable game despite not captivating the player with its gameplay, but sacrificing some difficulty is likely what made it fairly easy to get invested in the narrative and see its many parts to their individual ends. The side quests alone could have been a nuisance in a tougher game and they provide the best additions to the story, so Timespinner is probably best approached as a serviceable exploration-focused platformer that has an excellent story to motivate you to keep playing.
Timespinner’s priorities may be in the realm of narrative and visual design, but these parts of the game end up being the best reason to play the game. The bosses look impressive even if they’re easy enough to take down, and the rewards for completing tasks or uncovering hidden rooms can often be a greater understanding of the compelling story. It would have been nice if the gameplay carried its weight more, but it doesn’t harm the game at all either because of the small efforts made to keep it acceptably average. Prospective players will no doubt have a better time if they go in looking for the richness and complexity to be found in the narrative, world, and characters instead of the run-of-the-mill Metroidvania action.