When we went to the GDC, we already knew that Zeit² was a rewind-able shooter with where the time travel mechanic basically lets you play the game cooperatively with yourself. What we didn’t know was that developer Thomas Bedenk had a human factors engineering background that makes travelling through time silky smooth without sacrificing the game’s challenge.

From the outside Zeit² looks like a methodical side-scrolling shooter of the old school. You can rewind time, but rewinds are useful for more than just taking mulligans. Instead, your trip down memory lane leaves footprints–a shadow of your ship that mimics your past actions. Your aggressive shadow frees you to fight other enemies, or you can shoot it to pepper the screen with bullets. As a gameplay mechanic, it’s as simple as it is powerful, and most people who played the game grasped it in minutes.

A man cannot be in two places at once
unless he is a space ship.

You’ll need your cooperative shadow, because Zeit² doesn’t play by the same rules as a typical shooter. Not only is it a bad thing to collide with foes, but surviving enemies steal your ship’s energy as they pass by. Because every single opponent is a potential mark against your life expectancy, Zeit² feels more hectic than it looks. Killing everyone often requires that you be in two places at once, so your shadow is your constant ally (it’s the only one who appreciates your strategic brilliance anyway).

Thomas Bedenk

Photo by Kate McKiernan

Well, constant may be an exaggeration, because your time travel powers accumulate only gradually. The relentless stream of enemies means that you’ll rarely have more than a few seconds of time travel on hand at any given moment. Complicating matters is the fact that some enemies can only be hurt by your shadow and some are shadow-immune. It might be simple to fire at a shadow-vulnerable enemy, rewind time, and let your past self deal the real damage, but as soon as the game starts mixing shadow-vulnerable and shadow-immune enemies the dogfight becomes time pressured strategic battle. Zeit² is only too happy to fake you out once the game begins in earnest, so you’ll have to make judicious use of time travel on the fly.

Brightside Games is working on one type of gameplay at a time. So although the game looks and feels quite polished, it’s still far from complete. The development team hopes to add boss fights and other traditional shooter features before the game is ready for release. Once Zeit² is ready, Brightside hopes to publish the game on XBLA and PC.

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