After shuffling things around last minute, I found myself dropping my usual random chooser process for this week's pick and just went with Timespinner, as one of the more acclaimed explormers from the past few years that was unfairly languishing in my backlog. Sometimes you don't even need an excuse. Timespinner is very much built from the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night blueprint (right down to annoying rare monster drops you might spend half an hour farming) but given an extra layer of time manipulation and paradox that both enhances the story without getting too up its own labyrinthine ass, and ameliorates the platforming in a way sort of but not quite the same as Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (oddly, sand is a big deal in this game too).

The protagonist is Lunais, the most recent "Time Messenger" in a clan of secretive nomads who protect the secrets of time travel from those that might abuse them, and her destiny is to be wiped from the timeline so that she might one day use her clan's time-travel device (the titular Timespinner) in times of great peril to travel back far enough to personally deliver a message of warning. This process has been an effective alert system for ages, but when Lunais is tasked with saving her clan from their destruction by an invading force of technologically advanced alien beings, the Timespinner is destroyed in the process and she is flung to her enemy's homeworld of Lacheim. The game then spends its time, as it were, between the present day Lacheim, where scientists are busy working on the broken Timespinner to learn its secrets and expand the reach of their galactic empire ever further, and the ancient past of Lacheim, back when they were a penal colony of a different despotic empire and struggling for independence at any cost. It's a dense plot, but one given plenty of chance to breathe with optional story logs and a number of NPCs to talk to and help out.

Lunais fights primarily through two "orbs": these orbs not only manifest in different ways - sometimes as melee weapons, sometimes as elemental magic - but level up independently, giving the player a great deal of customization potential. She also acquires the usual upgrades typical to an explormer - a double-jump, the ability to dive underwater, etc. - and can equip armor and accessories for stat boosts, not unlike Alucard and the vampire killers that followed. While the two equipped orbs don't combine in any interesting ways - Lunais always alternates them - the player can acquire necklaces and rings that are powered by the orbs and grow stronger when they do: the necklaces provide powerful spells that require charging up and spend some of Lunais's "aura" stat (which works like MP, and slowly regenerates), while the rings provide passive boosts that might involve increasing defense, revealing secret walls, giving attacks a life-stealing aspect, and so on. Often, you'll find that an orb isn't great in combat, but its effect as a necklace or ring makes it worth holding onto and powering up regardless. However, the most useful arrow in Lunais's quiver is her ability to temporarily freeze time: this makes enemies immobile but also indestructible, so in combat terms it's best to use it to avoid a wave of enemy projectiles or to move behind an enemy that is guarded from the front. The time freeze is otherwise used to turn enemies into transitory platforms: many of the early "need a double jump" type of impasses can be conquered this way, provided there's a foe around to freeze.

Like another recent well-regarded scion of the IGAvanias, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Timespinner gives the players so many boons and opportunities for growth that it renders the game a little on the easy side as a result. The Nightmare difficulty, which is the next highest after Normal, can only be unlocked with New Game Plus (or a special code), which is a shame as I might suggest experienced explormer fans start there. On Normal, I powered through almost every boss on my first attempt without ever needing to resort to my enormous stack of curatives, and I can't say I was being particularly careful when it came to memorizing and avoiding attack patterns or even using the time-freeze judiciously to avoid the worst of them. Your mileage may vary, of course, and there's a lot to be said for how running around checking every nook and cranny for upgrade items (there's the usual assortment of HP-Ups, MP-Ups, etc. off the beaten path) and new equipment can greatly unbalance a game's carefully planned difficulty curve, but I nonetheless waltzed through this game; if I slowed down for any reason, it was because I wasn't quite sure where to go next. Not so much a complaint but a warning for those who like their Castlevania types on the challenging side.

One notable aspect of the game's narrative is the preponderance of LGBTQ+ relationships, to the extent that they're more the norm than the hetero alternative. A game made this century will often toss in a potential same-sex love interest for one of its major or ancillary characters for the ongoing sake of greater inclusion, or at the least a hint that it's what that character is into, but it's much more overtly stated here. There are at least two pairs of characters in loving same-sex relationships (one you help nurture with a sidequest chain), one major trans character, one possible ace (i.e. asexual), and the protagonist is explicitly stated to be bisexual: this has a minor fun gameplay utilization too, as "temptress" enemies such as succubi and sirens have both a male and female version, and it's entirely random which one you might encounter in any given circumstance. This otherwise has no bearing on the game or its story in broader terms, but is a nice little change to the usual dynamics and something those who consider themselves LGBTQ+ and/or would like to see more representation of those relationships in their media might be interested in learning.

I should also remark on Timespinner's presentation. While pixel art is a fairly well-established presence in games of this type, it's still exquisitely done in this game with some otherworldly vistas and provides a nice juxtaposition between the same environments in both the distant past (where it was much more green and lively) and the present day (where the planet of Lacheim has undergone severe environmental collapse in part due to the technological advancements). Some areas are in ruins, some enemies have mutated over the centuries due to the radiation, and some extinct species now only exist as robots: a scientist log explains that the robots built for their Empire's armies were modelled on the planet's extinct species as a sort of subconscious apology for the humans' role in their demise, as part of a greater process of ongoing ecological destruction. It's worth running around for these extra logs and messages, as their context aids both the worldbuilding of this eon-spanning empire as well as the protagonist's personal journey of revenge. The game's music is also uniformly excellent, and I was sometimes glad to return to an area for collectathon purposes to hear one of my favorites playing again.

Minor caveats aside, I really enjoyed my (uh) time with Timespinner and though it could've done with being larger and more ambitious (hard to do when you have a fixed Kickstarter budget and a lot of expectant pre-paid customers, I'd imagine) and made its harder difficulty available from the outset there's not a whole lot else to kvetch about. It gets everything I like about this genre right, from the almost invisible quality-of-life touches (ample fast-travel points and multiple loadouts to switch between, for two examples) to the "big" concerns like a decent story to follow and combat that flows well and offers many customization paths to personalize your approach. Highly recommended, and I'm happy I took the plunge on it sooner rather than later.

Rating: 5 out of 5.