Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    Time Hollow

    Game » consists of 3 releases. Released Sep 23, 2008

    The premise of Time Hollow is to use a mysterious pen to open portals that take the player into the past by drawing on the touch screen. These portals help solve the disappearance of the main character's family.

    tofin's Time Hollow (Nintendo DS) review

    Avatar image for tofin
    • Score:
    • tofin wrote this review on .
    • 0 out of 0 Giant Bomb users found it helpful.
    • tofin has written a total of 7 reviews. The last one was for Time Hollow

    Too short to be perfect

    The Nintendo DS Lite was the first game system I ever really owned. It wasn’t a gift, or a hand-me-down from a friend. It was an actual system I saved up for, went to Target, and purchased. My mind was initially blown. Keep in mind this was before the prevalence of the iDevices as the iPhone didn’t launch until 2007 to the Lite’s 2006 launch date. My first game on the system was not a large release, since I had not quite exposed myself to game journalism yet; I just purchased whatever I thought looked good. And one particular game stood out every time I browsed GameStop’s DS rack: Time Hollow.

    In retrospect, I probably was only interested because the concept sounded cool. You play as Ethan Kairos, a high school student who has woken up to find himself in a new reality where his parents died when he was a kid. Instead of dressing up in a bat-suit and beating up criminals, he decides to look into the matter. His investigations yield a mysterious device called the Hollow Pen, which allows him to essentially rip holes in time and space to change reality. Cool, right? Luckily, the game doesn’t focus too much on how the Hollow Pen works, which prevents a set of internal rules from tripping up the plot. As a casual gamer, I liked it a lot. It kept my interest and got me thinking.

    But now, with my horn-rimmed fake Game Journalist Spectacles™ placed squarely on my upturned nose, I can look back on this game with a fresh perspective. The first thing that comes to mind is the odd mix of culture and genre. See, Time Hollow is a Japanese point-and-click adventure game. When I think adventure games, I think Western studios. Japanese adventure games tend to be more ‘visual novel’ than ‘game’.

    But this is totally a point and click adventure game! There are certainly visual novel aspects to it, almost to the point where I expected somebody to call me a ‘baka’, but the usual point-and-click tropes are here for sure. You use things in your inventory on the environment to solve puzzles, sometimes you have to pixel hunt, and talking to characters yields more options in gameplay. But what makes Time Hollow unique is in how the puzzles are presented to you.

    As I mentioned before, the Hollow Pen can open small holes in space and time called Holes. Duh doy. The almost greek tragedy-esque twist here is that, with every Hole opened, the Hollow Pen saps your life (here referred to as ‘Time’). Ethan only has so much ‘Time’ before he dies, so each Hole you open brings you closer to death. Your cat Sox occasionally finds glowing green things around town, though, so if you ever need a little boost on a difficult puzzle, track him down to replenish one bar of your ‘Time’ meter. I like this mechanic, as it forced me to think long and hard before I started in on a new puzzle.

    I suppose the biggest problem I have with this specific game is that it’s a little short. Sure, there are the usual problems with adventure games, but in total all six chapters take about 4 hours to clear. There’s a new game plus that takes maybe ten minutes to finish and adds an extra wrinkle to the whole Hollow Pen dynamic. Although, if you want to hang around and listen to the great soundtrack (which is recommended), that’ll probably add some time to the game.

    Adventure games need at least a decent plot to keep the player’s attention, and Time Hollow’s plot sure is decent…at least initially. Since the mechanics of the reality-altering pen is never really explained, the story has to be primarily character-driven. All the characters connected to the Hollow Pen are interesting to be sure, but the ancillary characters from Ethan’s high school start out either annoying or one-dimensional. Things ramp up in some great ways around the third act, and I’d argue the initial slow pace is to set up context for when things start going to shit, but there definitely are some moments when it’s hard to slog through the somewhat dull feel of the first few chapters.

    Time Hollow is definitely short and contains the usual adventure game problems, but it’s still quite fun. I certainly liked the plot and some of the puzzles were simple enough to keep me entertained. It should go without saying that if you’ve never been into adventure games, you shouldn’t buy Time Hollow. But if you’ve ever enjoyed that style of game or enjoy an interesting story, then track this one down. Can’t be that expensive. It is a DS game, after all.

    Other reviews for Time Hollow (Nintendo DS)

      Whoa! 0

          Time Hollow tells the story of Ethan Kairos, and some quite exciting events that occur in his life. The tale begins on the eve of Ethan's birthday, in his humble home. Ethan lives with his stubborn cat Sox, and his two wonderful parents. It seems they live a near ideal life. On this particular night, Ethan's uncle shows up, and causes some unrest in the Kairos home, and leaves declaring that his brother (Ethan's father) "Will be sorry." The  day comes to a close with his parents mysteriously...

      1 out of 2 found this review helpful.

      Dissapointing 0

      I am a big fan of point and click style adventure games, so I don't usually complain about "lack of gameplay" in the usual sense for these types of games. Time Hollow, however, literally has no gameplay. You click around on a map to visit locations, but you never have to explore because the game almost always tells you exactly where to go. Dialogue consists of clicking on various question bubbles until the exchange has ended, but there is no real interactivity here; just move down the list. Th...

      0 out of 1 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.