Consider, if you will, the time loop. It’s a pretty common staple of fiction, appearing in a variety of genres including sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.
The precise impact of a time loop on a narrative depends heavily on the loop’s precise rules and mechanics.
10 Games That Don’t Respect Your Time
Long games can sometimes be the perpetrator here, but it’s often the way a game is made long rather than the length itself.
Sometimes a loop can be exploited for an advantage, other times it’s a metaphysical cage trapping protagonists outside of reality.
With the help of an interactive medium like gaming, time loops can produce fascinating new perspectives, both in storytelling and in novel gameplay mechanics.
Not all games nail the time loop concept perfectly, but we can think of quite a few that take a pretty impressive crack at it.
10Deathloop
A Time Loop Is An Endless Party
If you’re a hedonist, a time loop could be considered the ultimate party opportunity. You can do whatever messed-up nonsense to yourself that you like, then wake up fine the next morning.
Of course, every party needs a pooper, and inDeathloop, that pooper is an unwilling looper named Colt.
As you explore the looping island of Blackreef, you’ll gather intel on the masters of the loop and assemble a plan to take them out in perfect sequence.
Watch out, though, because another looper, Julianna, is hot on your tail. She’ll use the loop to her own advantage to kill Colt and keep the party going.
9The Forgotten City
The Many Shall Suffer For The Sins Of The One
The Forgotten City
You know that palpable feeling of raw exhaustion that comes with some jerk messing up your big plan in an online game?
The Forgotten City absolutely thrives on making you feel that way, and it’s not even a multiplayer game.
In this mysterious Greek city forgotten by time, a single sin from any resident results in the entire populace being punished with golden petrification.
You’ll need to investigate the mystery while ensuring nobody does anything stupid, even if it’s something as simple as swiping something that doesn’t belong to them.
8In Stars And Time
Nothing But Actors On A Stage
The climax of a traditional fantasy RPG is supposed to be the big emotional payoff of an entire story, showcasing the unbreakable bonds of the party.
In Stars and Time shows us what might happen if a member of that party were forced to relive that big climax over and over again.
Siffrin the traveler is trapped in a loop that has seemingly well-defined rules, yet absolutely no discernable exit.
What starts as a hybrid RPG and mystery becomes quite a distressing dissection of what being trapped in a loop would actually do to someone and their mental state.
7The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Three Days Never Felt So Long
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Just about any game in the Legend of Zelda series has its fair share of backtracking and do-overs.
InMajora’s Mask, though, do-overs are part of the core gameplay loop, as Link is trapped in a three-day time loop.
In addition to the usual combat, puzzle solving, anddungeon crawlingyou’d expect from a Zelda game, you also need to internalize the schedules of the people and the world.
Being in the right place at the right time can unlock new knowledge and abilities that broadens your ability to explore.
Gone In Sixty Seconds
You’d be surprised how much you can accomplish in just sixty seconds.
There are all kinds of simple tasks that take less than a minute to accomplish, apparently including solving the mystery of a cursed sword.
InMinit, you have exactly sixty seconds to help as many people and learn as much about your looping predicament as you can before dropping dead.
It’s a small adventure, but one that requires a fair bit ofprioritizing itemsand optimizing paths to complete in a timely fashion.
5Outer Wilds
The Beauty And Terror Of The Universe
Outer Wilds
It’s not pleasant to think about exactlyhow much time our planet has leftto exist before being consumed by the sun.
If, for some reason, you’d like a preview of that lovely dread, though, you’re able to experience it over and over inOuter Wilds.
Outer Wilds and the Beauty of Emergent Gameplay Design
Sometimes, discovering what your objective is can be your objective in and of itself, which makes the gameplay of Outer Wilds so compelling.
From the moment you wake up, you have exactly 22 minutes to explore an entire solar system of planetary bodies before the sun goes supernova.
Whether from the sun’s heat or simply running out of oxygen in your space suit, you will experience just how terrifying it is to be alone in space, and you’ll experience it a lot.
A Metaphysical Roguelike
Constant repeats are baked intothe roguelite genre, what with all the dying and carrying over upgrades and what have you.
This is howReturnalintegrates its own time looping story into its roguelite gameplay. Selene Vassos is stranded on the alien world Atropos, and every time she dies, she returns to the point of her crash.
In order to uncover the mystery at the center of the alien planet, Selene will need to make continuous, dangerous expeditions downward.
The makeup of the planet is constantly shifting, with the enemies and areas you encounter changing with every subsequent loop.
3The Sexy Brutale
Time To Move On, Old Man
The Sexy Brutale
A common staple of time loop stories is using your knowledge of future events to influence those around you.
What if, however, you couldn’t use your future knowledge in that way, at least not directly?
The Sexy Brutaleis a time loop puzzle game, requiring you to use your knowledge of the titular manor and casino to save the guests from certain doom.
The twist is that you cannot be in the same room as any other person, which means you can only save them from behind the scenes, influencing events out of sight.
2Slay The Princess
Slay the Princess
A choose-your-own-adventure book could be considered something of a prototypical time loop story.
After all, what do the consequences matter when you can just turn a page back and go the other way?
Slay the Princess operates on similar logic, giving you a myriad of different choices to make and paths to pursue.
This isn’t just a bit of metanarrative convenience, though; every choice you make is happening, and you will have to live with the consequences of each, no matterhow horrifying the result may be.
1Alan Wake’s American Nightmare
Reruns: The Original Time Loop
Depending on how much TV you watch on a regular basis, you’ve probably seen the same episode of your favorite show multiple times over, possibly in the same week.
What if, in every single rerun of that episode, the characters were aware of everything that happened previously, up to and including their own deaths?
Alan Wake’s American Nightmareis a sort of spin-off-slash-interquel between Alan Wake and Alan Wake 2, placing the exhausted writer in an episode of the fictional television series Night Springs.
Alan needs to complete objectives according to the script to progress, but every time, those who help him suffer the consequences. Until he can find a way to do it perfectly, keeping them all safe, his unpleasant evening keeps repeating.
As with the other games in the series, it’s an interestingmetafictional takeon the concept of story progression.
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Video games are no stranger to time travel. Here are the games that do it best.
