When Braid and LIMBO Had a Pretty Baby | Chronology Review

<p><em>Braid<&sol;em> and <em>LIMBO<&sol;em> are two outstanding indie games that have demonstrated fantastic art styles combined with new and complex gameplay in the puzzle genre&period; But what happens when you put those two games together&quest; You get <em>Chronology<&sol;em>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><em>Chronology<&sol;em> is a platform-adventure game about time travelling&comma; puzzle solving and a friendship between an Old Inventor and a Snail&period; The Inventor wakes up in a destroyed and miserable world&comma; with lost memories about the events that lead up to this point and even who he is&period; Upon finding a time travelling device&comma; he begins to remember that the reason the world is in turmoil and with the help of a snail it’s up to them to change the course of history&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><img class&equals;"alignnone size-full wp-image-61764" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2014&sol;05&sol;05104210&sol;chronology&lowbar;03&period;png" alt&equals;"chronology&lowbar;03" width&equals;"1280" height&equals;"720" &sol;>As stated previously&comma; the game looks and feels like a combination of <em>Braid<&sol;em> and <em>LIMBO<&sol;em> with its own sprinkle of magic&period; The camera angle and the separation of the foreground and background make it look similar to <em>LIMBO<&sol;em>&comma; and the mechanics of time manipulation to solve puzzles remind me of <em>Braid<&sol;em>&comma; but in a pretty different way&period; Whereas <em>Braid<&sol;em> had enemies to defeat and use in puzzles&comma; Chronology uses AI as another obstacle to surpass&comma; along with many interactable objects and time travelling to make things pretty confusing at times&period; The Inventor has the ability to change time to the future or the past&comma; changing the surrounding and state of objects&period; If he is holding an object&comma; he can take it through time and place it in that timeline to be used to advance&comma; such as planting a tree in the past and climbing the fully grown tree in the future&period; He also has the ability to call the Snail to his exact location &lpar;depending on the type of platform&rpar; which is extremely useful&comma; as you can probably imagine&comma; snails are slow as heck&excl; The Snail can move along walls and ceilings&comma; and with the ability of jumping on its shell as the Inventor&comma; it creates a whole new way to traverse the world&period; The Snail also has the ability to freeze time&comma; allowing the Inventor to jump onto a moving platform that was moving too fast for example&period; This combination of gameplay mechanics works great and creates some really interesting puzzles that are incredibly satisfactory to overcome&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Although the story is short&comma; maybe only 1 hour 30 minutes to finish on a good run&comma; the way it is told through the characters fantastic voice acting and the concept art cutscenes creates a wonderful atmosphere in the game while you learn about the world and the characters&period; It’s beautifully told and leaves you wanting to learn more and more the longer you play&period; The music and sound design also blends well giving you a real separation of the past and future and can change the feel of a situation in seconds&period; And I can’t forget to mention the puns… oh those puns&period; If you enjoy puns&comma; this game is FULL of them&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><img class&equals;"alignnone size-full wp-image-61765" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2014&sol;05&sol;05104159&sol;chronology&lowbar;05&period;png" alt&equals;"chronology&lowbar;05" width&equals;"1280" height&equals;"720" &sol;>As great as the story and gameplay are&comma; the strongest aspect of <em>Chronology<&sol;em> has to be the amazing graphics&period; Everything has it’s own powerful feel to it with every detail taken into consideration making huge creatures and contraptions very impressive&period; The animations are smooth and what I love about these games is that it doesn’t matter if you have a gaming PC or not it’s almost guaranteed to work flawlessly&period; The transition from the past to the future&comma; through a black and white phase&comma; is seamless and really does give you the sense that time has passed dramatically&period; We see more and more of these beautiful indie games and each one seems to get more impressive year by year&comma; and <em>Chronology<&sol;em> is one of those&comma; setting the standard for 2D art and animation&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The only truly negative thing I can say about the game is that it was too short&comma; I yearn for more&period; Everything else ticked the right boxes&comma; a fun&comma; beautiful and unique game that can be a real challenge at times&comma; as I got stuck on one puzzle for at least 20 minutes&comma; which yes&comma; is frustrating&comma; but once you figure it out it’s the most satisfying feeling&period; If you’re looking for a game to challenge your mind and give you that satisfaction that games like <em>LIMBO<&sol;em>&comma; <em>Braid<&sol;em> or even <em>Portal<&sol;em> offer&comma; then I would recommend picking this one up from Steam&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Check out the soundtrack here&colon;<br &sol;>&NewLine;<iframe style&equals;"border&colon; 0&semi; width&colon; 100&percnt;&semi; height&colon; 120px&semi;" src&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;bandcamp&period;com&sol;EmbeddedPlayer&sol;album&equals;3062626699&sol;size&equals;large&sol;bgcol&equals;ffffff&sol;linkcol&equals;0687f5&sol;tracklist&equals;false&sol;artwork&equals;small&sol;transparent&equals;true&sol;" width&equals;"300" height&equals;"150" seamless&equals;""><a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;chronology&period;bandcamp&period;com&sol;album&sol;chronology-original-soundtrack">Chronology Original Soundtrack by Stöj Snak<&sol;a><&sol;iframe><&sol;p>&NewLine;