Developed by Flazm and published by META Publishing, Time Loader is a narrative puzzle where you travel back in time and solve puzzles as a small robot loader. With its brilliant physics-based gameplay, Time Loader is a nostalgic trip down memory lane for players who grew up in the 90s. Time Loader brings a brand-new take on narrative puzzle games as you drive around in a cool little yellow loader with a robot arm through your creator’s house. There is also time travel and plenty of choice making Time Loader a unique title in its genre. This is our review of the Nintendo Switch release of Time Loader in which we swing through the kitchen and chase a cat through the backyard as a robot loader.
In Time Loader, you play as a little loader who is sent back in time in order to change the course of an accident. The accident in question involves the boy Adam who falls down from the roof as he is trying to catch a kite. To prevent this accident, the father of Adam sends back a small robot loader that he created in order to do anything in order to prevent this from happening. After initial testing of your movement and abilities, you are sent back in time and after that, you are on your own to complete different tasks and deduce whether that particular action will alter the future and prevent Adam from falling down the roof. Since you are a pretty small loader, you will view the world from the loader’s perspective and you begin exploring Adam’s house. Completing each task requires you to acquire various tools, travel to different rooms in the house, and perform different complementary actions as well.
While your main goal is to prevent the accident from happening to Adam, in doing so, you will be solving different puzzles along the way. These puzzles mostly include opening up the path ahead while moving things here and there with your robot arm. Your arm also helps you grab various spots and swing from them to areas that are not available normally. Different rooms in the house bring their own unique challenges and you have to solve simple puzzles in order to progress in each room in order to complete a major task. Like in the kitchen, you have to navigate the kitchen shelves in order to turn on the garbage disposal unit, and down in the basement, you have to turn off the main power of the house. Getting around is no easy feat since every level is filled with obstacles of various shapes and sizes and you have to get around them to complete your mission objectives.
This brings me to my favorite element of the game which is the level design. Every room in the game is greatly designed and is filled with tons of cool things to see and explore. Every room is very well decorated with proper furniture items, utilities, and more. The basement has a complete LEGO-type city setup with a functioning bridge that goes up and down. The outdoors of the house has a cool treehouse and the backyard has BBQ grills and everything else that you would expect from a good house. The level design really makes exploring fun and the puzzles fit into the whole scene perfectly. As you explore these rooms, you will pick up various items that will make traversing around obstacles easy for example, from the basement, you nick better springs from another toy car that allows you to jump higher, and from the toolbox, you find a screwdriver which allows you to tinker with screws in order to forge new paths. Similarly, many other items in the game allow you great movement freedom in the game as well.
Moving on to my next favorite bit of Time Loader and that is the actual gameplay itself. I will say that the gameplay of Time Loader is next to what you would expect from any AAA developer today. While the game is physics-based, moving around and jumping with the loader is extremely satisfying. The loader wheels offer decent enough traction and as it works to climb different surfaces, watching this is extremely satisfying. The loader does not get stuck while moving around anywhere and you are free to explore the environments as much as the game allows you to. There are zero glitches of any sort when it comes to gameplay or puzzle solving and this is one of the reasons why I enjoyed playing Time Loader so much. Apart from the simple left and right movement, jumping, swinging, and using various tools in the game is a breeze as well. The learning curve of the game is pretty small and there are no complex mechanics in the game.
The gameplay also incorporates plenty of platforming in the mix as well. The rooms seldom provide a smooth path toward your goal so you will need to jump and swing around to solve different puzzles. For this, you will need to use any sort of platform or surface that comes your way. With that said, I also want to clear out that Time Loader is not an open-world game but is extremely linear however most environments do offer a little bit of extra space for you to check out in order to find secret symbols that result in a secret ending in the game. A single playthrough of Time Loader will take you a maximum of two hours depending on how you solve the in-game puzzles. For unlocking all endings, you can replay the game and it all boils down to your own preferences. The gameplay is pretty addictive and you might end up completing all of the game in a single sitting.
Time Loader is a great game and it allows you to make your own decisions as you try to decide the fate of the kid that you went back in time to save in the first place. To encourage replays, the game offers three unique endings and there is even a secret ending if you prefer to go for it. With a beautiful art style and great gameplay mechanics, Time Loader easily is one of the titles I can recommend you to play in your free time. With its easy-to-understand mechanics and not-too-challenging puzzles, you will have a solid two-hour playthrough at your hands. With a lot of references to various 90s franchises, the game will certainly appeal to your inner child and brings back plenty of nostalgia if you grew up in that particular era.
Final Verdict:
While Time Loader is aiming to be a puzzle game, I still consider it more of a narrative, platformer because the puzzles are fairly straightforward and right there in your face to solve. None of the puzzles in the game are that hard to solve and most of the time, you will simply buzz through a puzzle without even knowing there was a puzzle that you just completed. I love the art style of the game and the level design is really good. Whoever designed the house, could be a great architect in the real world as well. Overall, Time Loader is a great game and the gameplay mechanics are silky smooth. If you love puzzle games and want good gameplay mechanics thrown in the mix along with some narrative elements as well, then I suggest that you jump into Time Loader because it ticks all the right boxes for you.
Final Score: 8.5/10
