The Time Machine
- ⭐️ 7.5/10
- 🌡 Medium
- ⏳ 90 Minutes
- 👥 2 – 4 Person
Allons-y, time travellers, it’s time to save the world! For a short walk from the Reading train station you will find this little gem of time adventure. After a short debriefing at the HQ you will be tasked to fix a time machine and you will have exactly 60 seconds to do so … errr … yes, you are very likely to fail … your failure will cause a time anomaly and the time machine will spit you out in a different time and space. Luckily, you will keep in contact with your friendly robot companion, Wexie, who will help you to collect instructions to fix the time machine. It’s all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey really!
The storyline is fun, and because of the multiple jumps in time (and space) the game flow is very smooth, although exactly because of this clear sectioning of the game the puzzles are fairly linear. There is some opportunity to multitask at each location but it’s very limited not just because of the number of puzzles but also because of the space available (you are likely to elbow your fellow travellers a few times). There is a nice variety of puzzles, and they are all era-appropriate, fitting in with your current locations (a bio scanner in Jacobean London would be just wrong, after all!). The puzzles aren’t terribly difficult, but they can be challenging sometimes. They are fun to solve (they aren’t just padlocks after padlocks, which was a huge plus for me), with just minimal (*shudders*) math, and athletics (have somebody with you who likes to/is willing to crawl) involved. After gathering all the instructions through the passages of time you get yet another 60 seconds to fix the broken time machine and with a bit of hurry hopefully you will now succeed thus saving the world. No pressure!
The decor of the rooms is a bit low-budget but the game itself definitely compensates you for it. With a tiny bit of suspension of disbelief, all grown-up kids with a time-traveller’s heart (or two) will enjoy themselves.