Time Warpers takes the design philosophy and mechanics of an idle clicker, and just builds a bigger, fuller experience. And the end result is easily one of the more elegant implementations of idle clicker elements to date. The idea is to have a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter PvE experience, with a huge progression grind based in idle clicking. Yes, there are many moving parts here, and I'll try to explain this as best I can.

First, we must consider that there is a spectrum between complete idle clicking/AFK and complete active playing. Time Warpers allows the player at any given point to choose where they want to exist on that spectrum. And really, your place on that spectrum will depend on your strategy and goals. You want to idle this in the background to grind some levels? Sure, we can do this for the most part. You want to run through FPS-style and actively progress with even more benefits? Yep, we have that option, too.

One of the best parts of this title is playing with the community on the public server. The whole thing feels alive with folks running convoys to gain ground, or just having people in the chat discuss strategies and such. So far, the community is beyond nice and helpful, and has created it's own subculture at this point. Do you have to interact with the community? Nope. You can play offline or just stay to yourself, but being online is a huge part of the charm here.

There is a lot of layers here, and a good bit to learn. I suspect it takes dozens of hours for most people to grasp all the mechanics. In fact it took me five hours before I even had the option to 'idle'. At fifty hours in - I'm still learning fundamental things and strategies. Explaining how everything works isn't useful here. All you need to know is that there are some tower defense elements, heavy loadout management, a great and intuitive UI, and a wickedly addicting gameplay loop.

The only people I wouldn't recommend this game to would be those that simply want nothing to do with any idle clicking elements whatsoever. Yes, this is perhaps the most complex use of idle clicker elements - but at the core they are still present.

Pros:
+This is a feature-complete game in my opinion, and is wonderfully polished.
+The most impressive implementation of idle clicker elements to date.
+Balance feels great. Everything is well thought out.
+The massively multiplayer PvE experience is remarkable.
+I love the layers of complexity mixed in with idle clicker elements.
+The community is helpful and kind.
+The world is quite beautiful and I've become really fond of it.
+I love the butterfly collection elements.
+The upgrades are awesome. Particularly the hoverbike speed!
+Horribly addicting.
+Weapon perk/loadout management is fantastic.
+I appreciate that this doesn't go on deep sales during the Early Access campaign.

Cons:
-If you despise idle clicker elements, this probably won't change your mind - although it is much more active in general.

Easily easily worth full price for anyone looking for something totally fresh.

Disclaimer: This review covers only the single player aspect of the game. If you want to know about the multiplayer mode and its community, be sure to check Ryan’s review


Time Warpers pushes the clicker genre forward. While it can be easily mistaken with just another clicker game with great graphics (based only on screenshots and trailers), the moment you get to play it, your opinion will surely change. Combining the action of loot shooters and ARPGs with the addictive progression of a clicker game, Time Warpers rewards active play. You can progress faster when you are actively playing, but of course, if you want to idle you can still make progress. You even earn gold to buy upgrades when you’re offline. What’s not to like?


Gameplay here is pretty straightforward, but you will still need about four or five hours to discover all game mechanics. Those initial hours are like a giant tutorial, and while this long introduction can turn off some people, those who persist will be rewarded with one of the most engaging games recently released. You basically are always progressing – there’s always something new to unlock – a new ability, a new weapon, a new research, etc. And there are collectibles too! At every five minutes, a rainbow butterfly will appear near your turret, and if you collect it, you’ll receive a huge gold boost. Each level is subdivided in 100 zones, and in every zone you have to collect red butterflies that will reward you with an extra amount of gold at the end of the level. There’s also blue butterflies at each 10 zones that gives you Time Cubes, that are used to research for better DPS (damage per second), more DPC (damage per click), more rewards, and much, much more neat features that wouldn’t fit in this review. These Time Cubes leads to another topic, which is:


If you have played a clicker game before, you will feel right at home at how the gameplay loop works here. If you haven’t, let me explain: you won’t progress forever and ever. At some time you will hit a wall and will need to Time Warp (yes, like the title implies), which is basically starting from zero again, but with more bonuses and more attack power. While this can sound a bit off-putting for those not familiar with clicker games, believe me, it’s the contrary – this gameplay loop is one of the things that makes this game so addictive. And as you get more Time Cubes, you can do a research that allows you to start in more advanced zones - just don’t forget to research for more DPS and DPC first, otherwise, you won’t be able to kill those tougher monsters. And – here it comes my favorite feature of this game – you can play Time Warpers like a roguelite. Each time you do a Time Warp, you can apply some modifiers, which includes Permadeath (after dying, the games forces you to Time Warp), No Healing Stations (but you still have a chance to get health drops from big bosses at some point), No Ghost Progress (which means no idling in-game) and No Hover Bike (a feature that plays the game for you). And, yes, enabling these modifiers (separately and/or combined) gives you a huge Time Cubes bonus, which leads to more research, which leads to more gold, which leads to faster progress, which leads to more fun!


Time Warpers is being made by Proton Studios – the same team that developed Time Rifters and Time Clickers. While I haven’t played the previous games of these devs, with Time Warpers I’m a huge fan already. The game is basically finished, given the amount of content (5,000 zones so far, with more to come) and polish (I haven’t found any bugs yet and the interface is very easy to use). There are huge updates at every two weeks and some smaller patches in between. The developers are also easy to reach and are always listening to the community, so if you like the idea of helping to shape the future of this game, you’ll have a great opportunity here.


With huge amounts of content, very fun gameplay, appeal to both idle and active players, some innovations, and a responsive dev team, Time Warpers is an easy recommendation for everyone who loves loot shooters, clickers, ARPGs and games that simply makes you feel good. Time Warpers is pure dopamine rush!

Pros:
* Very fun and addictive gameplay
* Easy to use and intuitive interface
* Rewards active play
* Progression even when you’re offline
* Single player and multiplayer modes (public servers or friends only)
* Dedicated and responsive dev team

Cons:
* Nothing major, but movement is a bit clunky on low gravity levels

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☐ Adults
☐ Human

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☑ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding

---{Story}---
☑ Story?
☐ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovley
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

The folks at Proton Studios really look as though they've mastered the art of progression, or how to really create engaging and exciting progression in a game.

Combining elements of their voxel shooter Time Rifter and the undeniably addictive idle-clicker elements of Time Clickers, this action packed and highly playable new formula auto-clicker takes the addictive management mechanics of the genre and whips it into action with an intense online co-operative sci-fi shooter presentation. The combined results are about as awesome and hard to put down as you'd expect.

Idle clickers are already addictive enough with the idling aspect; the periodic ire/scrutiny of a loved one or wife nagging you with "You're checking that thing again?!". Imagine that draw but magnified by the constant action of a hyperactive voxel shooter, and the mystifying and engaging level progression of an old dungeon crawler.

In a genre I usually dismiss for its laziness, Time Warpers has proven to be the most hands-on and easily the most engaging of its kind.


It starts out simple enough; a bright and flashy retro FPS in a voxel world, just you, your peashooter, and some gnarly little chunky monsters to pew-pew at. Stages are broken up into distinct areas with a default 10 waves of extraterrestrial baddies to blast, and the shooting here feels fast-paced and raw just like the classics of the 90's did. The stages go by quick and the scenery becomes progressively more celestial as you travel deeper into outer space.

The further you get into the 3,000+ looping stages (since starting this review the number of areas has already increased to 5,000) the harder it gets obviously, up to the point that the player will eventually hit a brick wall. At this point players will most often run into each other for online play, as they catch up with other groups of pigeonholed caravans lacking just enough strength to take on an end-stage boss and continue. This is where a full reset is warranted and in turn a full cash-in of your accumulated Time Cubes, the main currency used to grant the player with powerful permanent upgrades to carry into their next run.

The Time Cube upgrade screen is the most integral part of your progress and inevitably what keeps the player coming back for more. This is where all of the real changes are made and impact is felt through the strengthening of multiple factors from your raw attack power, to your time cube acquisition volume, and even the attack speed and movement of your idle-caravan.


The carrying force of a convoy is incredibly powerful, almost too powerful in fact if you aren't careful with online play. In a single night a new player can be carried all the way into the higher loops and with a healthy supply of Time Cubes, provided they fall in with the right player convoy. All of that lovely sightseeing and exploratory butterfly hunting can go spoiled in exchange of a quick rise to power. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to prevent or avoid this for those with the self-control through offline or private game features... But what's the fun in that?

There's something seriously magical about watching a long-as-Hell convoy of idle players engaging in the visual epitome of modern day gaming, lazily rolling along and raking in those Time Cubes at an automated pace taking in the excitement of high-reward with little-to-no effort. The snake of chair-ed soldiers chilling as their automated weapons take care of waves of baddies beckons to you, you see them whip by at first and soon enough you long to be a part of the winding chains of high level players flying through areas you previously thought were difficult.


Time Warpers makes the best use of its voxel visual style I've seen yet; Stages are visually refreshing sci-fi landscapes that take you from Earth, to the Moon, and eventually to the interiors of massive space fortresses.

There's a touch of classic retro sci-fi level design feel here, and blasting my way forward through hordes of bright insectoid creatures and mechs gave me flashbacks to space operas like Phantasy Star Online and Jet Force Gemini. The same memorable galactic backdrops create an engaging and epic 'Space War' atmosphere that hits my nostalgia in just the right places.


Time Warpers has a whole lot of room to grow and expand, and that's what makes being a part of its development process so exciting right now. It has such an exciting and solid initial few loops, but it does eventually suffer from the same inevitable end-game repetition that pretty much any idle-incremental-clicker does.

So much can be added to keep that initial loop fresh and exciting for a longer period of time. More upgrades to hunt after and experience the effects of, obviously more stages with new sights and intense bosses for players to look forward to. In general, more mechanics to make the caravans possibly even more engaging, or to encourage more communication/co-operation.

This is one Early Access ride I've already dumped hours into, and am enthusiastically sticking along for to see what kind of unique ideas arise from this promising team of developers.

This review made possible through the consideration and contribution of Review Experts(REXnetwork) and the developer/publisher. Email contact@dnbmedia.co for requests & promotions

Before considering buying Time Warpers, one should consider *why* they are buying it. As a playable game, it's loads of fun dumping 40 to 80 hours into killing hordes of neon spiders and other walking or flying beasties. As an idler, the game can be completed...but only with hundreds of hours spent running it in the background.

Playing this as a regular FPS, you could spend hours running through the ten thousand included levels (yes, there really are that many). Add to this the perks and upgrades unlocked through collecting Time Cubes and Weapon Cubes, and you should stay busy for quite a while. Upgrading your sentry turret and weapons is a must in this game, unless of course you're into retreating every few levels to regain some health. "Dying" in TW isn't a massive inconvenience as you fall back a handful of levels and can just speedrun back to where you were at. Unfortunately, you'll notice early on that enemy designs don't change spectacularly over time due to the game levels being differently themed only every 100 levels - once you pass the 500th level the themes repeat all the way up to 10k.

Those of you looking primarily to play TW as an idle game, expect to actively play it for the first twenty or so hours until you figure things out and unlock your jet bike. Playing online on the developer-run server isn't necessary but is strongly suggested as you'll occasionally be picked up and carried in a "convoy" of other players idling up through the worlds just like you are. TW has arguably the nicest multiplayer community, although it is fairly small at around 50 concurrent users during peak hours. As time goes on, you can leave the game unattended for longer and longer stretches and the true idle nature of this title will become apparent.

Are there flaws in Time Warpers? Definitely. This being an older Unity game, it does sometimes have issues with memory leaks which can lead to lots of lag and the occasional crash if left untended for many hours. Every now and then your soldier will stop auto-advancing and become stuck until the game is restarted. Very rarely the game will glitch and incorrectly unlock achievements (known bug, not fixed as super hard to replicate).

There are few instances where the review system would benefit from a third "Neutral" option, but this is one of them. I like Time Warpers and suggest buying it on sale if you're looking for a fun shooter and don't care about achievements, but I feel it greatly overstays its welcome as an idler. Clicker / idle games are hard to balance in terms of actual play time invested compared to time spent idling, and unfortunately Proton Studio didn't quite get it right with this one. After enough hours, revisiting the level up area to "reward" yourself with slight skill boosts becomes rote. I'd have had this game top out around the 400 hour mark, instead I'm probably looking at another 400 hours on top of my current 580 before I complete the achievements.

5/10 - Like ice-cream with ketchup and jerky, this game tries to be too many conflicting things and thus struggles to do any of them brilliantly. That said, there is potential here to be something quite fun and unique. Get it on special or wait for development and polish. Right now, it's an interesting idea but a near miss. Full (early access) review and feedback below:

=Intro=

Funny enough, when I saw this game I assumed it was a Tower Defense game like Sanctum. I like to pick up early access titles that interest me, so I grabbed it on the summer sale.

=Gameplay=

This is a strange game and what it is isn't obvious when you start. On your first play, it's a sort of horde shooter, like Serious Sam or...honestly closer to another (extremely underplayed) game called Mothergunship. You move through 'rooms', enemies spawn in waves, you blow enemies up and collect resources which you use to level up your main character, your drone and your turret. Every 10 levels there is a boss that drops cubes, the game's research resource which allows you to increase a variety of other stats.

However once you get a bit deeper into the game and gain access to the hover-cycle, you sort of see what the game really is. Basically, a semi-afk clicker most similar to something like Swag & Sorcery. The cycle automatically proceeds through the game and all you have to worry about is upgrades as you go (which you can invest cubes into the game doing for you too, although it's way simpler just to set up a macro), and stopping the run when you are at cube capacity. Well, and one other thing, which we will get to.

This makes it one of those 'put it on in the background while watching Preacher' games, although you can choose to keep running it manually as a shooter for increased rewards.

As the game progresses and you earn more upgrades, you can improve your bike, damage and reduce the amount of waves per zone, speeding things up and allowing you to both farm faster and progress to later zones faster. There are a *lot* of zones in theory, but after a sort of point they loop back to the early ones.

You can also apply 4 'perks' for your gun, drone and turret, which again, remind me a lot of Mothergunship - turning a simple pistol into a multiple-shot-firing-piercing-bouncing handheld doomsday machine.

This all sounds fun, and at core - it is, there just isn't enough variety or complexity to make either style of play compelling.

Your 'automatic' mode makes you completely invulnerable, meaning that the only consideration is time and efficiency. Which is something of a pity, it would be cool to have at least some threat as you progress, possibly counterable with customizeable AI, defensive upgrades or something.

The manual shooter mode fares worse. Enemy variety is severely lacking and while a few new enemies are added later, these are either overly annoying (such as the fast moving UFO type enemies) or generic. It's either a spider thing of some variety, a big troll thing, a robot or a standard dude. Maybe some more start appearing later? There is no way to upgrade health, and if you die you are sent back several zones which wastes time - and the game gets quite bullet-hellish.

Weapons are also...meh. At present you have a laser pistol, a rocket launcher and a plasma gun. Once you've upgraded your auto-fire to be self sustaining, there is no reason to use anything but the pistol - it's a hitscan weapon that does plenty of damage, while the rocket launcher is too slow and drains energy too fast and the plasma gun is...just a worse feeling version of the pistol (although it works well until you've upgraded your auto-fire energy to support the pistol).

There are a handful of interesting perks, but at a certain point you are just going for max coverage and speed as everything gets one shot (unless you go *really* deep). Bizarrely, the game often takes perks away from you as you level, until you hit a later level breakpoint, which I really disliked.

The main problem is that the game can't decide what it wants to be. For a sort of semi AFK farm game, more loot and upgrade variety is needed. The game is *screaming* for random, tiered loot (of varying action and rarity) and weapons that make things unfold differently and give a sense of surprise and novelty. Right now it's just numbers and bigger numbers. The whole point of this sort of automated game is to sit back and watch things go boom in interesting ways - right now it's all just a mess of blue lasers.

The shooter mode needs way more enemy variety and...yeah, could also do with weapon variety too. A fast firing hitscan rifle or minigun? A slow firing, high damage railgun? Splashy artillery? Missile batteries? A lightning gun? A napalm thing that sets terrain on fire?

Again, so much potential - it feels like if the game had focused on one or the other and did them well, it could be quite special.

Another annoyance are the butterflies, which you will see mentioned in a lot of reviews. Basically, every zone has a red butterfly to find and every 10 has a blue butterfly to find. This cannot be done automatically, so you need to either fly around in camera mode or find them on foot. They are seldom that annoyingly hidden, but this does force players who want to autofarm to ...well, do more stuff and it gets really old fast. These butterflies give a lucrative reward at the end of each 'world', so you can't just ignore them. Fortunately you only need to do this once...but there are a *lot* of zones.

Plenty of other little irritations abound, but those are the big ones at present.

=Graphics=

Solid, Minecraft-esque voxel type graphics. Pretty lighting and an aggressive depth of field effect (which I love in games) makes them decent. However more zone variety would be cool, and again - way more creatures. Bigger, hulkier bosses, enemies that do different stuff, more weapons that do crazy things visually.

=Style=

Music is okay, but definitely starts to grate. Audio has problems, with pops and clicks and generally tinny. Early access, so this may change.

Again, concept is interesting, but we just need...more. More systems for upgrades. More random, rare drops to surprise us. More enemies. More to think about than just 'hit start, activate macro, check back every so often'. Another recent game (although not perfect) - Swag and Sorcery did this concept rather well.

=Value=

For the price...there is actually a lot of game here, and hopefully a lot more to come. However this is very much an early access title and should be treated as such.

=Overall=
+ Fun, unique concept
+ Decent graphics
+ Has potential
+ Uh...good for farming achievements for Steam events?

- Desperately in need of more complexity, more variety, loot, perks, weapons, monsters...well, everything.
- Cancerflies are butter
- Conflicting styles of play detract from each other
- Lackluster audio and music

At the end of the day, this could be something interesting. The idea of a horde shooter with massive progression and powerful, varied weapons and swarms of different enemies could be cool. A semi afk 'bot' game where you send your character through levels to do stuff could be cool. However here, these two aspects work against each other and neither turn out all that compelling. But again, there is potential here - lose the damn butterflies, add in some loot and cool monsters and give us something to think about besides pure speed in the hoverbike mode and you may have a winner.

As it stands, it's a close thing, but I cannot easily recommend this game in it's current state.

I've been following the game for quite some time (over a year now), and with every two week cycle the game gets better and better, so I have no doubts that this is one of (if not the best) incremental games I've ever played. Keep in mind, at the time of writing this, I am less then two hours in, but it is still worth investing money into. $20 may sound kind of steep to most people, but trust me, if you like the idea of going around killing bugs with a rocket launcher that shoots cluster grenades, this game is for you.

Kind of a fun clicker game. It's well made and the environments, enemies, etc are very well made.
However there are some features that really kind of defeat the purpose of this being a "clicker game" that really only serve to pad the amount of time you spend idling in the game. There's also a lot of upgrades that are more or less red herrings, and the endgame is kind of unfinished.

To give you an idea of what I'm disappointed by:
I have almost entirely beaten the game. Currently I have the game running in the background with 1250 hours of playtime, grinding to get the final achievement, which is still around 100 hours away. I have to leave this game running for another 100 hours just sitting here doing nothing to get it. No upgrading, no resetting, just letting it run. I might as well be mining crypto.

Virtually no progress happens when you close the game, this is a basic feature in most clicker games that this lacks and it becomes a huge drag after you reach the point of automation, because you can't really "automate" anything. You end up having to leave the game running, and click reset every 1-2 hours, getting increasingly marginal upgrades each reset. The 1300 hours I have spent really was more like 200, if that, of actual looking at the game. I technically beat the game probably 500 hours ago, but they appeared to have added a new feature called weapon cubes in the last two years, and while it makes the game longer and more interesting, it isn't complete and they didn't change the game loop to match this new feature and it shows.

There is no "end game" really, it just reaches the point where you have almost all the upgrades and are still getting locked at around wave 6500, and each reset gets you less and less each time, to where you have to go through 3 or 4 to get a single upgrade. It feels like I am missing something like a new currency, new upgrade, or something. But looking at guides and user posts lead me to believe that this is more or less it. I did play 99% single player though, so maybe there's something to the online game, not that multiplayer really does much since you're both automating everything. The game is "multiplayer" in the way that a Facebook game is "multiplayer".

I'd say these frustrations really only come to fruition around 40-60% of the way through the game and beyond. Everything before that isn't too bad and in the beginning is actually kind of interesting.

You can choose between a slow automation where your bike goes through the levels and you and your turrets take everything out, or you can risk more resources to do it yourself in FPS mode, but keep in mind this takes more of your attention and depending on your settings, a single death could mean the end of a run.
There's some depth to the perk and weapon system that gets upgraded when you beat bosses sometimes, however this mechanic isn't well explained and it's easy to miss. It isn't super important as early on it becomes very apparent that DPS is the king, so most perks/weapons get completely unused. Part of the reason the weapons get unused is because this game is a little bit laggy, even on lower settings, and everything but the hitscan weapons just add to the lag by creating multiple slow moving projectiles. This is where the complaint about being unable to close the game and get progress comes from. I can't really play another game while this is running because it is slightly demanding. It's one of the least idle, idle games that I've played.

The most fun I had actively playing this game was collecting the butterflies, they are hidden in the world and collecting them makes it so you get more resources when you pass where you found it the next time. After finding all the butterflies there is not much point in actually playing the game since your automatic run through will do everything much faster than you at that point. Not to mention butterflies eventually start to get magnetically attracted to you, so no need to find them either.

I do really enjoy the fact that they were trying something cool here, a multiplayer FPS clicker game where you do have to aim, move around, and dodge enemies to progress. The movement is nice, you can even Bunny Hop, and it's a solid game mechanically, it just misses the mark in being a good clicker game, and takes more of your time that it really needs to. The first 10% of the game was really fun actually, but it seems like that wears off relatively quickly once you get a feel for the gameplay loop.

The last good thing here and I think this should not be overlooked. PAY ONCE, NO MICRO TRANSACTIONS. Which is a breath of fresh air.

Don't buy this for the multiplayer or for a great clicker game, there are other better ones out there. But if you are interested in an original concept clicker game that's missed the mark, this might be worth picking up.

This is a great, enjoyable, idle clicker game that I am quitting as of 57 hours. It hurts to play this game. It checks all the boxes needed for addiction, and I am keeping it thumbs up for being different in a sea of clickers. Maybe I'll come back at full release.

If you want a fun movement based arena shooter, play Quake Champions or Warframe - both of which are free.
If you want to play an incremental game with depth, strategy, and months of content, play Kittens Game, Realm Grinder, Trimps, or NGU Idle - all of which are free.

If you want both of those combined and watered down, then you can't go wrong with this game for the price of a couple of pizzas, especially since it's the only game to do so.

Just because this isn't the game I wanted to play, doesn't mean that you won't enjoy it.