Time Walker: Dark World Review

It’s been quite a while since I have had the opportunity to sit down with a roguelike auto-battler like Time Walker: Dark World. Developer Heartfun has created a game with crisp, pixelated characters, a wide variety of spells to use, and rooms to explore. From the trailer, the game looks quite complex, so I am curious to see how difficult the mechanics will be to learn.

You start the game by selecting four heroes from four classes: fighter, assassin, archer, and mage. There are 11 total, but at the beginning, you can only choose from these ones. I opted to select one from each, primarily because the game did not allow me to select multiple heroes from the classes, just one from each. From there, you pick your difficulty, which automatically defaults to easy if this is your first time playing, and then you get to select what contracts you are trying to fulfil. Contracts are your goals and jobs that will reward you with soul crystals. There are 10 of these quests to select from, each with a different description of what needs to be done.

Your fighter is then tossed into the first room. The characters that you are controlling all look the same, and they are not the classes that you had picked. Instead, you are playing multiples of a guy who the game calls weak, but he has a punch attack that you use against the enemies you battle. Around the characters is an area that is set up like a grid. You will position your fighters in the boxes to battle with the enemies that you see on the left-hand side of the screen. You can line everyone up so that they fight the guy directly in front of them, or you can make it so that more than one hero will brawl against a certain enemy. The game lets you figure out which strategy is more effective. Personally, when I reach a room with larger enemies that can deal more damage to me, I place more than one guy against them to destroy the foe before I get killed. You have only 60 seconds to clear the room, so be hasty!

Once you defeat all the enemies in a room, you will get a treasure chest card that will reward you with gold and an item or ability. The cards you collect will be put into your inventory, and you can select up to three cards to equip each of your characters with to give them different abilities. If you collect three of the same cards, you can merge them together to get a more powerful version of that base attack, which will take up only one slot instead of filling the full move area. Some of the abilities will give you attacks, up your defence, or heal your character and team. You will constantly be rewarded with new abilities, so it is worth experimenting to figure out which combination works best for you.

Every time you defeat all the enemies on a stage, you will have the choice of where you would like to go next. There are five different types of stages that you will encounter that are colour-coded to make it easy to tell where you are going. General Stages are the most common and are blue in colour; these rooms will award you with abilities. Purple Elite Stages don’t appear as often but may give you hero items. The orange reward stages are more difficult, and if you are able to complete them without dying, you will be given an attribute book that will improve your character's base stats. Green shops appear in levels 16/33/51/57 and 69, allowing you to acquire useful items to add to your inventory, and finally, the red boss stages. These are the places where your group will challenge a strong boss. You will face this challenge in levels 17/34/51/58 and 70, right after you visit the shop.

When your character dies and restarts, they realise that they are back in this same area again, so they must have died. So now you know that you need to switch your strategy and try something different. Try collecting Hero Cards, as these will let you change the class of your team members and may give you an edge against the enemies you are fighting. Plus, it gives them a makeover and changes their appearance.

There is a tonne of strategy involved in Time Walker: Dark World. Those based on the incredibly simple How to Play screen, you would never know. Put an ability in the slot, put the rest into other slots, and fight. That is it, so detailed! It will be up to you to do a lot of trial and error to figure out what works best. At least this point-and-click game is incredibly addictive, even with the lacklustre directions. Plus, the translation here isn’t the best, but it’s not too hard to figure out what is going on.

Time Walker: Dark World is a fun experience and was surprisingly addictive, even with the occasional bugs you encounter with the passive abilities and the glitchy soundtrack. If you are a fan of point-and-click auto-battlers, you should check this one out. There is loads of strategy here, and with a low price point, it makes the game even more appealing.