Straight offa XBLA, the first in a series of cool DLC titles (I’m not counting Geometry Wars 2, I mean, come on) that are released this month. I had originally no plans to pick this up because I was going to save my points for Castle Crashers (august 27 august 27 august 27) but it had a really strong demo that charmed my pants right off, if it were a person I’d compare tips with it in order to create two impossibly great lady getting conquistadors.

So, let’s have a chat about what it’s about, or more accurately I’ll tell you what it’s about and you’ll read it with a somewhat bemused stare on your face as the concept is bat shit bonkers. You’re some guy named Tim, who is attempting to rescue a princess that may or may not exist solely within his own imagination. This at first glance makes no sense at all, but the (sparse) narrative really makes you question the events happening in the game. Back-story is given in short “books” before the new level, and each one tells of Tim being a very introspective thinker, always wondering “what if everything was different?”

And that’s where the premise of the game lies.

And Christ what a premise it is. Each new “world” that you enter (all illustrated by David Hellman of the fantastic webcomic A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible) has a different theme to it, that is similar, but at the same time so dissimilar to the others. In world 2, everything is utterly fine, you have the ability to travel back in time (á la Prince of Persia) to correct mistakes, and can use this to solve puzzles, but after this is done? The difficulty is racked up a huge amount, one of the next world’s concepts is that while walking right, time goes forward, but walking left time travels backward, this gets inconceivably frustrating (at least, to someone that hasn’t played the game) when you’re trying to walk along holding a key to a door, travel up to a higher platform and walk backward, because your key will travel back in time to where it was when you were with it before then. Understand? No? I don’t blame you.

Another world gives you the ability to exist alongside your past self, the best way I can describe it is to show you this flash game: chronotron as it’s very similar, a lot of the puzzles will involve you having to throw a lever that raises a platform, then rewind time so that your future self can get onto the platform as it is raising itself, this was possibly my least favourite level as you are only granted one past version of yourself, where as the game I have just posted allows you as many as you’d like.

There are a few other levels too, such as the one where you’re granted the ability to slow down time in a specific area, but I think you get the idea, this is a strange game. I have seriously enjoyed the short amount of time I have spent with it (and there is a serious emphasis on short, I sat down to play it yesterday afternoon and now I only have around four puzzles left to figure out) and would definitely recommend it if you enjoy getting your brain tickled, and my tickled I mean compacted.