In His Time Review

In His Time is a 2D indie puzzle game developed by Tearyhand Studio and published by Kodansha. In it, you play as a young boy called Olly, whose dad died. It's focused on the kid's life and learning to deal with loss and is viewed from a side-scrolling perspective.

The game focuses on both loss and forgiveness. The story begins with Olly inside of a dream, but it acts as more of a tutorial. After waking up, our protagonist has to do a lot of chores around the house since his mum is sick and cannot function well. After that, he has to go to school. There, his teacher scolds him for being late and for being bad at the material taught. After school is over, some kids bully Olly by trapping him inside the school, and he has to figure out a way to get out. The day after, when school is over, these same kids force him to break into a house with them. They steal some things from the house and are found out. Everyone manages to run away except Olly, who is caught. The man who owns the house they broke into talks to him and asks Olly to get everything that was stolen back, and that's when the game actually starts. The story is great overall and is really emotional at times, though it has a lot of Christian messaging in it, which I'm not a big fan of.

In His Time contains a lot of puzzles that aren't too hard but are still fun to solve. As you advance in the game, the puzzles fit your knowledge and what happened before you got to this point. Items you got early are used to solve puzzles a lot later, which makes you think of possible uses for your items at almost every point. There aren't any other gameplay elements, which can be a bit boring, and the controls aren't great and are unchangeable, which hurts how fun it is because pressing the Y button on a controller to jump is not something anyone would ever get used to. The game saves every time you quit or enter a new room, which is nice as it means you won't lose a lot of progress no matter what happens. Overall, the gameplay isn't bad, but there are some problems with it that do hurt how fun In His Time is.

Unlike most 2D titles, the game doesn't use pixel art, but everything is modelled or hand-drawn, which fits the theme and gameplay a lot more. The background looks simplistic, something that makes sense as In His Time is viewed from a child's perspective. It's clear a lot of thought went into the art style used for the title and how to apply it as well, which adds a lot to how immersive it is. All in all, the graphics are great and feel natural in the world of In His Time.

Unfortunately, the game lacks full voice acting, and instead, all characters speak with noises that resemble some kind of pseudo-language, and they're not very good. There are only a few sounds that characters make, and almost none of them convey emotions; playing with voices off might even be better for immersion. The music, on the other hand, is amazing, and every track fits what's being said and is happening on screen and helps understand the characters' emotions a lot better.

Overall, In His Time is a really good game to try if you like puzzles or want a good and emotional story. It's not perfect and can feel a little slow or boring at times, and there are problems with the controls. It can be very engaging, but I would only recommend it to fans of puzzle games. I don't regret playing it, though, and definitely think that reaching the ending is worth it if you've started the game already.