Tempus Bound

I’d describe this as a mysterious, cinematic journey with focus on awesome art & pixel lighting. The design is really strong, love that the different levels all have unique themes - very atmospheric. Nice amount of achievements to collect. Overall a treat for the eyes & ears, interested to see what this developer does next.

One of the great pleasures of gaming is finding single developer games like Tempus Bound, which are often priced fairly enough to dive in blindly. It's at times like these that I wish Steam had a more nuanced recommendation system. Because, ultimately, despite some frustrations which I'll break down below, I would recommend Jason's game to a certain type of player. For those that like esoteric platform/adventure games ala Animal Well, and have empathy for the harrowing path that is game development, Tempus Bound is a curious experiment in short-form gaming from a developer whose still getting their chops. For a player who can suss out some physic quirks of the game more quickly than I, Tempus Bound runs about an hour. I struggled with certain sections - namely the initial disappearing mushrooms and the rotating glass orbs. The Game Boy Color graphic/art style can look quite nifty when walking about in forests and swamps, but for tasks/puzzles that require some discernment, some objects can feel overly-detailed for a low-res style such as this, and thus, appear more confusing than they need to be. For instance, when rotating the glass orbs, I wasn't sure how they had to be aligned simply because the detail made it seem like one side was different from the other... something I'm really not quite sure was the case as I eventually just rotated them enough to solve the puzzle. Having said that, the way the foreground and background are utilized in this style lends to the depth of the world that's being explored, giving us plenty of fun little animations and landscape details, allowing for a relatively short experience to feel immense. Tempus Bound may feel clunky at times - case in point, I wouldn't recommend trying to break/edge the game as you can get stuck and have to restart - but the personality of the game shines through, and at $4 I'm more than happy to support an upstart developer in order to encourage them to create more games. Congratulations, Jason. I look forward to what comes next!

I haven't played a ton yet but holy crap does this game have a great art style. I really love the visual aesthetic of it; reminds me of older GameBoy games mixed with the Ori games. While i'm not totally sure where I'm going, I am loving the journey. Really incredible work.

Beautiful

If you like to wander around, search for secrets... If you like atmospheric games where you have to decipher the story without text, and you enjoy the interesting art style as shown in the trailer. And are fine with a short game with no combat... Then I recommend Tempus Bound! It has its issues (weird physics interactions at times, able to get stuck if you are too thorough, and it's shorter than I'd hope), but it's a great example of more experimental indie games. I suggest a discount, and possibly trying the demo if you're uncertain at all. What did I like most about it...? It had an illusion of something greater, and I was very intrigued. Overall it still did a nice job, especially after some reflection on the ending... Wish it had been at least one level longer. I could be more detailed about everything, but it's best to just go in blind imo.

Big fan of the sound design

É bom!