No Time to Explain

The PC version of No Time To Explain is a successor to the original browser game. The story is based on time paradoxes; you play as different versions of the same character that often goes back in time to warn himself of some future danger. It’s a platforming game where your means of navigating the levels is propulsion from your energy gun. There are different characters though but you will only use these on a handful of levels. One guy has a shotgun, and one guy pulls himself to a point, another is the opposite and pushes away.

The levels are small but challenging. It reminds me of Super Meat Boy in some ways. The Flash graphical style, small environments, the difficulty, the inconsistency in mechanics. The height that you reach seems inconsistent; you can jump a certain height but you try the same maneuver again and now you can’t.

When you die, you respawn on the last platform you touched. Even though it can be quite tough, it’s not frustrating because of this.

There’s plenty of good level design, and the brevity of the levels suits the game style since it gives you satisfaction of overcoming the challenges.

The early bosses are decent, but the latter bosses are complete rubbish. The “diabetes” boss sees you repeating the same jump and shoot routine about 50 times. There’s a randomly generated level that has 3 layers and you must be on the top layer to hurt the boss but it is pure luck if there’s a spring to boost you up, and pure luck if it generates platforms you can actually reach. The final boss is a one on one fight. Your opponent has a shield and you don’t, and he jumps about randomly. It seems pure luck if you actually defeat him.

On some levels there is a collectable in a hard-to-reach or slightly hidden part of the level. This gives you a hat.

I initially played with a controller but some sections seemed easier with a mouse and keyboard so I did switch.

It definitely has some frustrating parts, and the latter parts are held back by poor boss design. However there is plenty to like about the game, but you are only going to get around 3.5 hours out of it.

An expansion of a Flash game from the Newgrounds glory-days of Flash gaming, No Time to Explain comes off a long and troubled development history spanning over four years, ending with a definitive "Remastered" edition, released in 2015.

About half of the game consists of fast-paced "micro" platforming in the vein of Super Meat Boy: using a sort of gravity gun, you are tasked with navigating tiny levels in ten or so themed worlds filled with all kinds of traditional platformer obstacles such as spikes, fire, and bottomless pits. Each world is themed around an alternate-universe version of your character; though some of the earlier themes veer in the traditionalist direction, many of the later themes are absolutely clever, especially when you're given new weapons. A notable highlight is a dessert-themed land that (perhaps inadvertently) evokes the cake puzzles in the Wario Land games for the Game Boy. Towards the end of the game, you're also thrown into an existentialist-themed land that, without spoiling too much, deftly satirizes the overly serious early 2010s-style post-Braidian puzzle-platformers that No Time to Explain poses itself as an antidote against.

The remaining half consists of boss battles. These battles are often puzzle-boss encounters that require considerable speed and dexterity compared to the more relaxed pace of the platforming. I think most people who played this game have things to say about a certain mole encounter that marks the game's halfway point; apparently, it was even worse before the remaster as the game required you to beat this boss with only one life.

There is a sort of frame-story that ties all this together, involving an evil alternate-universe version of your character. There seems to be a lot going on under the surface in this story, but true to the game's title, there's no time to explain what's going on as you rush from world to world.

Though there are many great ideas buried within this game, I think games such as this live and die by the controls -- and unfortunately, the controls leave a lot to be desired. There's often a lack of tautness and precision that leaves some jumps and maneuvers that should be completely deterministic to chance. Oddly enough, despite the precision nature of this game, I found using a gamepad to be a more polished experience -- with a keyboard and mouse I found the mouse controls highly imprecise, as if there were some sort of mouse acceleration or smoothing going on in the background.

Would I recommend this game? Unfortunately, it's a mixed bag. Even though No Time to Explain exudes style and creativity from start to end, the control scheme adds an extra degree of frustration. I certainly came close to rage-quitting several times, notably during the mole boss and the final boss. Fortunately, it's a short game, clocking at 3 to 4 hours for most players if you go looking for the hidden hats in the levels, and developers TinyBuild had the sense to (even with a second episode!) end the game before it got too tiring. Humble Bundle frequenters who have this game in their library with extra time to spare can't go wrong giving this a shot.