‘Fear The Timeloop’, a 3rd-person action adventure game that plays more like a horror with a unique twist. You are on the clock. Brought to you by the Development team at TacoEaters, and joining them in the publication is PlayWay S.A. They put a nice little spice on their game: a 15-minute clock is all you have to survive!

You play as Sheriff James Cooper, awakening on a cold, hard mortuary floor of a deserted hospital, alone, shot and bleeding out, but this isn’t the end, only the beginning. 15 minutes is all the time you have, like a twisted Groundhog Day: live, die, repeat! It becomes obvious right from the start that death is imminent, but luckily for us, you are maintaining the memories from each loop. If you have ever seen or played a Resident Evil game, then Fear The Timeloop will be a cakewalk for you.

From a 3rd-person perspective, shoot, melee, and run your way through the maze of each floor of this hospital. You’ll have to manage your time and a small inventory as you explore this run-down hospital, but beware: challenges await you – puzzles to solve, keys to find, and doors to unlock. Each floor has you running a plethora of paths, finding the right tool for the right door.

Throughout this game, the map would be my biggest saviour; finding and remembering the right path tested my memory, but more than that, it was clear. Giving credit where it’s due, it clearly helps guide you more than the average map.

The arsenal at your disposal to survive this nightmare consists of shotguns, magnum pistols, rifles, and a baton. Firearms are heavy and slow, so I had to adjust my shot timing. I found it easier to pull out the baton and beat them down rather than waste ammo. You learn to deal with all the timing lag in these hit-or-miss situations.

With the smallest inventory I have ever seen, I hope you like grit and bare, and not being able to organise it efficiently. As your inventory grows over time, keeping it clean and tidy becomes a problem. Not being able to shuffle it around properly as you see fit, and splitting stacks is just annoying. Just like a classic Resident Evil, you have a stash in a safe zone that helps keep things somewhat decently organised.

It seems unnecessary to have it this way, and it’s a disaster. Apart from weapons, Fear The Timeloop also offers a variety of abilities scattered across the map. Each one offers unique buffs to Cooper, such as increased melee damage and more effective medical care.

The game does well at delivering what you would expect from a horror game: dark rooms, poor lighting, and a spooky atmosphere. The character model itself, while nothing to write home about, is about the standard we should come to expect from a game at this level.

Spooky sounds and chase music do a good job of setting the mood throughout gameplay. Without overdoing it with loud noises and jump scares, I found myself feeling the thrill of the chase and fight each time. I didn’t feel overloaded with unnecessary screams and shrieks. The radio, however, did leave me wondering: Does it need to be this loud, and would that be the only letdown in the audio?

For a small indie game, it would be hard to nitpick at some of the rough edges this game has, though. Simply put, it’s not without its flaws. Confusion is a big thing: being lost on the map and not knowing where to go next, needing an excessive number of items to open 1 or 5 doors, and then having those doors contain something unneeded that you will get 3 rooms later.

During the hours I played the game, I enjoyed myself, from the fights to the chases to the puzzle-solving. It is fun to play and, with tweaks, could be even better. Its replayability is something you could do, but I felt I learned enough from 1 playthrough to not want to go through it all again.

For a reasonably priced game, I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of games with a twist in their gameplay and likes a bit of a challenge. So, if you have about 10 – 15 hours to spare, depending on your ability to solve puzzles and crack safes, give it a go for sure.

Written by: Matiyus