I'm writing this before I'm 100% done with the game. Just an FYI.

Super Time Force is one of the best games I've played this year, period. Its so fun. And thats the most important thing, isn't it? Its incredibly fun. The gameplay is solid and introduces a mechanic that improves the action platformer so much that I wouldn't mind seeing a few other games incorperate something like this, because my god is it amazing.

The time travel. Its incredibly fun and satisfying to fly back in time to kill an enemy that killed one of your other teamates, and possibly save his life. You can then absorbe their life and now you're able to take even more hits(One more, to be exact). This doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you see it in action, believe me, its a lot of fun. Another thing this game does very well is it makes the entire team important. There will be situations where your wondering how to solve it, and maybe you'll pull out a teamate you wouldn't really think to use. It just adds so much more to the game and makes it that much more enjoyable.

I'm about halfway through the game and if I was going to make any sort of complaint it would be the story/humor. For one, the humor is just bad in my opinion. Its like the borderlands-esque trying really hard to be funny and it just makes me cringe kind of humor, for that reason the rest of the story is just garbage to me, because its based so much on this terrible sense of humor(in my opinion). It falls flat, and its really a shame because the rest of the game is so amazing.

I suppose gameplay is king here, but if you're gonna try and write funny humor, don't make it so horrible that I'm cringing when I try and read your dialogue.

I don't really do ratings anymore, so I'll say this. I recommend this game at full price, absolutely. Especially if your into the kind of humor the game produces. One of the best games of the year so far, hope to see more great things from Capybara Games.

Edit: I have now finished the main story of the game. I still love this game as much as I did when I wrote this. The story is still horrible.

"It's like Broforce, but instead of being high on freedom, you're high on time travel."

Super Time Force Ultra is a fast-paced sidescrolling game that utilized a unique mechanic, time travel. Using time traveling otherwise known as "Time Out", you're able to go back into the past while your past self is still there allowing you to have multiple versions of yourself to kill everything that stands in your way. There are multiple characters to unlock that each have their own special abilities. The game contains a time limit and collectables for each level and boss battle which would require you to use Time Out if you wish to collect them all. You have a limit to how much you can use Time Out which can be increased by the aforementioned collectables, and makes the game relatively easy if you spam it, but hard if you don't use it at all.

Here is the spolier-free plot.

• Sexy pixel graphics
  
• Fun
  
• Replayable
  
• Nostalgic
  
• Controls work great
  
• Valve characters make an appearance
  
• Easy and difficult at the same time

• Time Out still shows Xbox control GUI

Do you like arcade-style shoot-em-up platformers where you fill the screen with bullets?
Do you ever wish you could rewind the game a few seconds to before you made that one mistake?
Do you like taking the measured, methodical route to collect all the shiny things in the stage?
Do you enjoy performing the perfect speed run?

Do you want to do all of these at the SAME FREAKING TIME?!

One thing for sure, I have not played anything liek this before.
Personal score so far 9.5/10

Pros:
- I created an army of 50-60 me on a single boss fight.
- Game plays really smooth both on keyboard and xbox controller!
- Sound effects are amazing!
- Originality of the game is originallisticlishshly original!
- Thankfully not another 2 hour campaign, there's a little learning curve and a bit of immersion!
- Funny 80's punz that force a grin or two.
- Mission slow-mo replay is awesome, it's almost better than gameplay itself.
- No multiplayer? If there was, it would cause brain damage!

Cons:
- unfortunately the purchase of this game does not come with real food :(

+ Splendid pixelart
+ Terrific and ambitious idea
+ Fantastic cast of characters, each with their own abilities
+ Unlockable characters
+ Lots of (silly) humor, fun story
+ Tactical boss fights
+ Replay value (badges and more unlockables)
+ Amazing soundtrack

- Rather short
- Sometimes a bit too difficult to see the character you're currently playing with

[Rating: 87/100]

It feels pretty bad wanting to write a bad review of this game, but after several times of picking it up and slogging my way through it I kept having the same problems over and over.

On the surface the game has a very fun pixel aesthetic, and the music more than adequately captures the mood of the game. However, this game is almost exclusively aesthetic.

The games core mechanic is around using different characters to work your way through a level--You can only take 1 hit before you die, but you can rewind time at any point and respawn with the same, or a new character. The games challenge comes from using characters to quickly overcome set pieces and race against the clock, which has a very tight time constraint. You're only allowed so many respawns too, which (in theory) should force you to use your rewinds/respawns effectively.

The problem with this game is that almost everything can be brute-forced and the set pieces end up providing little to no challenge during the games stages. Overcoming the set pieces is tedious and repetative, and using characters effectively doesn't provide any real rewarding feedback, and this is due to an overabundance of available resets.

Almost all the stages can be taken down with a single character, and whereas the game is not entirely intended to be played that way, there is literally no encouragement to do otherwise. This is largely due to some of the characters being incredibly niche in their application since each character only has 2 moves: Their standard attack and a charge attack. So more than likely you'll find yourself comfortable with 1 or 2 characters, only branching out in a desperate attempt to inject some life into the shockingly mundane experience.

The game comes alive during the boss fights, which if the game was only the boss fights (and the mildly entertaining puzzle rooms) I would actually recommend it without much thought. Using your entire rewind pool to take down one very overpowered enemy ends up feeling relatively exciting because of the nature of being able to overcome pattern in one cohesive string of actions. However, ultimately, like the stages, this doesn't feel immensely rewarding despite it's flash-in-the-pan fun due to the players ability to slam their head against the enemy until it's dead.

Also the the writing is horrendous. HORRENDOUS. Whereas I don't require much story in my games, and in fact I usually want it to be as unintrusive as possible when it comes to platformers, I simply could not ignore the juvenille attempt at humor that this game crams down your throat. For a game with the potential to be played semi-serious for some great humor, it devolves to sophmorish poop and violence jokes. I wish I could've ignored it, but the game makes a point early that it wants to be at some part narrative to justify your adventure, but the justification is so garbage that I spent most of the time wishing it wasn't there.

Could you have fun playing this game? Probably. Can I recommend this game? Not even remotely. Unfortunately the games uncompelling gameplay and ♥♥♥♥♥♥-chill inducing writing leaves a title with high potentail stranded in the dime-a-dozen pixel aesthetic indie games as of late.
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At first glance, Super Time Force looks like a Metal Slug/Contra type of game: a 2D side-scroller in the run'n'gun vein.
While the aspect is similar, the gameplay is in fact very different, for better or worse.

The special feature of Super Time Force is to rewind time in the level while the previous occurrence of the player will do the same exact action. The player spawns with a new/same character, at an earlier point of time in the level, and exists alongside his past selves.
It is then possible to prevent the death of previous characters to pick them up for bonus combo attacks, or to be multiple characters shooting at the same target to gain time in destroying something, as there is a time limit to finish the level (which is very generous with all the bonus pick-ups to increase the time on the clock).
At the end of a mission, a replay allows to see an army of the player storming through the level and wreaking complete chaos.
This time feature is particularly well done and makes the game really really fun, as the players create their own challenges and time puzzles.
There is quite some variety in the level design and the atmosphere of the different levels (dinosaurs, post-apo, medieval, futuristic, etc), so it keeps feeling fresh and interesting.

The problem is that the gameplay itself is not exactly the best. Unlike for instance Broforce, most characters can shoot in diagonals and up or down. This sounds like a good idea of course, but it is badly implemented. Games where you move and shoot independently do the twin-stick formula. On PC, it would mean moving and jumping on WASD and using the mouse to aim and shoot. But no, they went with the same stick/WASD both for aiming and moving, which removes the possibility to navigate fluidly through opponents while disposing of the enemies that are on a different plane than the player, and a LOT of enemies are on a different plane instead of just facing the player. The placement of the enemies is good, don't get me wrong. It just feels imprecise and approximate with the current control scheme. Thankfully the game is reactive and not clunky, but really I wish the moving and aiming was better implemented to reflect the complexity of the game. The developers came up with buttons to lock the player from moving or to keep aiming in a specific direction, which seems like a weird patch-up instead of just using the mouse/another stick to aim. Especially on PC!

There are tons of characters to unlock, even if the main first ones are often the most suited. They different abilities are great and complement each other, it is really fun to use them and to think about which is best for which situation.

The story is simple, fun and silly, and the graphics are.... Well, it's a matter of taste, but from the developers of Sword and Sworcery I expected better. Everything in Super Time Force is very minimalistic and cubical, even a lot of effects. I did not really like the art style despite liking the variety in the environments and missions.

As a conclusion, this is a game with a great novel game mechanic that is fully mastered, and just in addition to the fun of shooting with interesting and different characters, it is worth playing it. The downside are the controls, having movement and aiming on the same keys does not suit a game with so many actions and it makes it feel imprecise and approximate. Movements/jump on WASD and aiming on the mouse would have felt so much better!

You've finally done it; you've invented time travel! But before you can begin to use it to make the world more better robots start falling from the sky, everything starts exploding, and a future version of yourself appears in front of you. Turns out time travel isn't quite all it's cracked up to be, but that's OK because the Super Time Force is here to fix all the stuff you screwed up and make the world more awesome for everyone! Though it's probably Capy I should thank, not the STF, for giving me some an awesome...time, with one of the most outrageously fun and intensely smart games I've played all year!

Super Time Force Ultra (the last word being as this is an updated version of the Xbox One/360 game) is a side scrolling shooter ala Contra, but with an insanely clever implementation of a time manipulation mechanic. The gist of this is you have the ability to rewind time at will, letting you back up and remedy a poorly done section or avoid a grisly death, all while your other character continues to run on their own timeline repeating your entire previous run before you rewound. What this means practically is you have the ability to stack characters on top of each other, allowing you to clear huge amounts of enemies, collect items, and quickly decimate bosses incredibly fast as dozens of versions of yourself run along the screen at once. Think the replay mode at the end of a Super Meat Boy level, except now everyone has guns.

But the mechanic doesn't stop as just a rewind button, but also allows you to save other versions of yourself by killing an enemy before they get to you, and then stacking your saved character onto yourself and doubling your firepower and lifespan. This not only lessens the blow of death, but actually makes it rewarding and almost encouraged, as well as completely destroying the frustration of a difficult segment or challenging enemy as it's so easy to rewind and do it again.

With so much rewinding and replaying segments it would be easy to have the pacing be absolutely sluggish and repetitive, but STFU accounts for this by giving you but 60 seconds to run through levels (though there are certain collectibles that extend this slightly) making it an all out dash for the end before time runs out. Frequently I'd find myself playing for hours without ever realizing it, as with everything moving so fast and absolutely no downtime it's ever so easy to melt away into the game and have it feel as if no time has passed at all.

I realize trying to take this all in makes STFU sounds like an immensely complex and stressful game, but the genius of it is that as soon as you get your hands on it everything is shockingly intuitive. Reading the "how to play" summary before starting the game had my head spinning, but within moments of playing the game everything fell into place and only continued to become more engaging and creative the longer I played and experimented with them. STFU is incredibly smart yet completely accessible to anyone that picks up the controller, and it's this fact that allows it to break out of the realm of just an interesting idea to being an insanely fun experience. It balances intelligent design with pure joy and entertainment with a deftness that is rarely achieved in any genre, no less one that has been floundering in a pool of uninspired mediocrity for the last several years.

But maybe ultimately what makes STFU so gratuitously delightful to play is the sheer amount of unrestrained fun you can feel emanating from every bit of the experience. From the gorgeously colorful art style, to the silly writing and even more ridiculous scenarios it's abundantly clear how much work developer Capy Games put into the game to make every single second as abundantly entertaining as it is. It's been far too long since I've played a game for the sole purpose of enjoying the hell out of it, and to be perfectly honest I cannot think of a single thing to complain about or that I feel could be improved upon in STFU. Capy has achieved excellence in all areas of design, and deserve a significant amount of commendation for what is almost certainly the most impressive game they've made in a long line of critical hits, and I can't thank them enough for finally bringing to PC.

In short I've had the time of my life, and can't wait to do it all over again (and I won't even need a time machine to do so)!

Full disclosure: Super Time Force Ultra was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer. You can read more of my writing on Kritiqal[kritiqal.com].

is an incredibly original side scroller, where we have the opportunity to play with time, access to puzzles and great dynamic gameplay.

Everything garnished with humor and great pixel art graphics.

For me a miracle eight out of ten

This is an incredibly fun, challenging, and creative game that also happens to be quite hilarious. Like Dark Souls, it is a game that will punish you in the beginning, forcing you to learn its mechanics, and eventually master them. Once you do, you will feel very powerful, and the game becomes quite rewarding as you burn through the stages with a mini-army of your past selves. It's a great concept that borrows from its predecessors, yet still creates something very new and fresh. The game's sense of humor is wonderful, and the ending is the best I've seen in any game in 2014. An original, enjoyable work by a very talented developer.