Time Rewind Mechanic

A gameplay mechanic where the Player Character is allowed to rewind back time at any point in-story, undoing their actions during the previous couple of seconds. Alternatively, if the mechanic isn't justified in-story, the player must be able to decide freely when to rewind to, in order to distinguish this from regular Check Points (although Justified Save Point may have "time rewinding" as its justification).

Compare Time Master, whose power over time is much greater than simply rewinding it. Contrast Save Scumming and Check Points, which are usually extradiegetic (out-of-story) methods to reset the game to a previous state.

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Examples:

Action Adventure

• Killer7: In the fourth chapter, the Smiths receive a ring from Susie capable of restoring a destroyed object to its functional state via time regression.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: When Link hits a Timeshift Stone, its surroundings will have its spacetime regressed to an earlier state. Where sand and scorched land is in the present, there will now be grass from the past; where lifeless bodies are, there will now be resurrected Ancient Robots or Technoblins. Link has to navigate through Lanayru Desert and all its associated areas (including dungeons) by taking advantage of these stones, as there are parts that are blocked off in the past but not in the present and vice versa, and switching between both states will prove essential to avoid getting stuck.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has the Recall ability, which causes any object of Link's choosing to reverse its pathway in real time while being unaffected by all outside forces.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link has the Magic Hourglass, which will rewind Link to where he was standing several seconds prior while the rest of the world moves forward as normal. It's primarily used for getting past barriers that were triggered by the player, though it's also used to get behind the final boss.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time gave the Prince a magical dagger that would let him reverse time if things got hairy or even if he died. The dagger was powered by magical sand, however, so it could theoretically run of charge, and it had a recharge time after each use which still made it very possible to get a true Game Over if you used it at the wrong time.

Adventure Game

• In Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, a ghost named Sissel is able to travel back four minutes before peoples' deaths, so that way he can save their lives. If things went hairy, he could rewind time back to 'Fate Changes', which serve as checkpoints as he works to save the person's life.
• In Life Is Strange, Max's strange ability to rewind time whenever she wants is the central fantastical element of the story. Gameplay-wise, it has multiple effects. It allows the player to try out different outcomes at critical plot points before committing to a particular story branch. In some cases, it can be used to restart a conversation with the knowledge gained by the previous play-through, adding new options to the conversation, making this more than a simple Save Scumming mechanism. Also, since Max (usually) retains her position after a rewind, this can be used for "teleporting", which is required for the solution of some of the puzzles.

Arcade Game

• Time Traveler featured "Time Reversal Cubes" allowing you to rewind the game a few seconds if you screwed up.

Card Battle Game

• Hearthstone: In the single-player Monster Hunt game mode, Toki's hero power lets you start the turn over again, letting you re-randomize RNG effects or just recover from a mistake. Also, her Nemesis plays an uncollectible card that restarts the game to turn 1, but keeps your health at whatever it was at.
• MARVEL SNAP: When Kang the Conqueror is revealed, he restarts the turn but without Kang in your hand. This lets you see what your opponent was planning and play around it, although your opponent can adjust their own strategy as well.

First-Person Shooter

• Tracer's main shtick in Overwatch is that she can rewind time at any point by a fixed amount. Since it is an online multiplayer game, time only flows backwards for herself, effectively placing her where she was a few seconds ago with her health restored to its amount at the point she rewinds to.
• Atlas from Paladins has two abilities that do this. Setback, which makes enemies go back 4 seconds in time, and get the lowest health during that period, while Second Chance does the same for him specifically (but gets the highest health he had of the 4 second period instead).

MMORPG

• Elsword: Time Tracer (one of Add's job advancements) has the buff skill "Seal of Time". If he or his teammates that gets buffed with it get killed, they'll be resurrected with the same amount of HP, MP and other resources that they had when they got the buff.
• The "End Time" dungeon from World of Warcraft makes time rewinding a major mechanic in the final boss encounter. Players have an hourglass with limited charges which will reset player positions, cooldowns, health, and floor hazards to the point of when the boss was first encountered. This, however, does not effect damage already done to the boss.

Platform Game

• Blinx: One of the five ways you can manipulate time is by rewinding it.
• Braid has this as a core mechanic: you can rewind time at any time for free while you attempt to figure out the tricky puzzle design of the game. Later levels also introduce additional mechanics, like items and moving objects that ignore your time reversal powers.
• COGEN: Sword of Rewind uses this as a main mechanic. It gives the player a time gauge, that can be used to go back up to three seconds into the past. Since Kohaku is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, getting hit automatically activates this mechanic, and consumes at least one second from the gauge. It quickly recharges, but in a battle it can be fatal. The time gauge also has other uses, like powering Temporary Platforms.
• Flashback adds rewind on death in an Updated Re-release. Depending on difficulty, there's a maximum amount of rewind time allocated per level.
• The Gardens Between uses time manipulation as its central mechanic, requiring the player to reverse and speed up time in order to guide Arina and Frendt through each level.
• Millie And Molly: The game allows you to be able to rewind time if the Player Characters get stuck in a situation they can't get out of.

Puzzle Game

• World of Goo has Time Bugs, little fly-like creatures that spawn occasionally whenever you make a move. You can travel back in time and undo a move by clicking on them.

Racing Games

• In the Forza series, there's an option that allows you to rewind if you've made a mistake, until you reach a point where you can try again. Of course, you can disable this option for more game points.
• Starting with Race Driver: Grid and Colin McRae: DIRT 2, most of Codemasters' racing games include a "Flashback" mechanic that lets you rewind a limited amount, a limited number of times per race. Totalling your car gives you the option to Flashback instead of starting the race over again, but you can Flashback at any time if you so desire. Higher difficulties give you fewer Flashbacks.
• Copying that option, various of the new Need for Speed games (especially seen in Rivals) also have the option of rewind part of your move if you got something wrong during the race.
• Before Flashbacks were a thing... many of Milestone's racing games has this feature. Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano and Corvette Evolution GT feature this unique so-called "Tiger Effect" which allows you to go back in time for a few seconds. Handy in case of accidents. Rewinds were later a staple in their WRC and MotoGP games.

Real-Time Strategy

• Red Alert 3: Tanya's Time Belt ability lets her teleport to her position a few seconds back into the past, which may also let her regain health instantly if she took damage just before using it.
• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew: The Sapient Ship Red Marley has the magical power to rewind time to a moment stored in her memory, as long as it's within the past day. While this appears as a justified reason for saving and loading the game, it's also an integral part of the story. At certain points in the game you find this power used against you when the Big Bad is able to rewind time.

Rhythm Games

• In Mad Rat Dead, the titular main character can rewind time thanks to the powers of Heart. For story purposes, he uses this to rewind time to certain events before they happened. For gameplay purposes, this allows the player to rewind time after they get hit. You can rewind up to sixty seconds before you got attacked, but the time on the counter won't rewind with it.

Roguelike

• The Binding of Isaac: The item Glowing Hourglass lets Isaac rewind time when used, putting him back in the previous room and undoing everything that happened in the current. Any RNG effects will play out exactly the same way when you go back into the room, but it can let you retry the room without taking damage or gamble risk-free. There's also a clever Easter Egg with the item as of Repentance: using it in he starting room of the run (only possible without cheating if you get the item as Eden or from Eden's Blessing), will take you to Home, since it rewinds time to before Isaac escaped to the basement.

Role Playing Game

• Save Scumming works this way in Undertale. When you die and continue or reload a save to try again or undo a mistake, certain characters like Flowey or Sans will remember what happened before you reloaded and will even comment on it. Other characters will sometimes even get cases of Déjà Vu, say with a character you save scummed back to life after an accidental death who may comment on how they suddenly feel scared for no reason or with a character remarking that the conversation they're having with you seems familiar. Even deleting your save and restarting a fresh playthrough won't erase all the lingering effects of your last playthrough, and Flowey will even call you out as a coward if you did it to abort a run where you had killed characters. Doing a Genocide Run even permanently taints your game, making it impossible to get the Golden Ending no matter how many times you rewind time since not even time travel can undo you selling your soul to the game's Big Bad.

Stealth-Based Game

• In Invisible, Inc., you are given a number of "Rewinds" per mission (how many, depends on your difficulty settings). When you activate a rewind, your game state is reset to the start of the previous turn, and there is no limit on how many rewinds you can spend one after another. While not justified in-story, this feature is intended to help players out of mission gone FUBAR.

Strategy RPG

• The C.H.A.R.I.O.T. system ('Combat History and Refined Implementation of Tactics') in the PSP remake of Tactics Ogre allows the player to go back up to 50 turns in the past on any of their turns. Doing so and taking a different action creates a branch in the timeline.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia introduces Mila's Turnwheel, a divine relic that grants visions of the past and future. It can be used to rewind any number of moves and turns up to the start of the current mission. It has a limited number of uses per battle, which starts at 3, but can be increased by finding Cogs scattered throughout the world.
  • Early in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Sothis grants Byleth the Divine Pulse, a power that functions the same way as Mila's Turnwheel, providing an in-universe justification to their Combat Clairvoyance (this is also implied to be the justification for the player being shown which enemy is going to attack whom on their next turn — Byleth can "see" that much without even needing to activate Sothis' power). In a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, Byleth also uses this ability in some of the cutscenes.
  • In Fire Emblem Engage, Alear finds the Time Crystal, a magical item that gives them the same power as Sothis's Divine Pulse.

Tower Defense

• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: The Thyme Warp plant will "rewind time" when planted on the field, causing your existing plants and the zombies to get restored to full health and put all zombies at the front-most column. This plant can only be used in the Neon Mixtape Tour levels, however.

Turn Based Strategy

• Into the Breach lets you reset back to the start of the current turn once per stage. Isaac Jones's pilot ability lets you reset a second time.

Non-Video Game Examples

Anime and Manga

• This is the true power of Rebecca's Ether Gear in EDENS ZERO. Cat Leaper allows her to Mental Time Travel back whenever she or those she cares about is in life-threatening danger and use the resulting knowledge to avoid the danger, which can happen anywhere from a few seconds to a full week. She had actually been unconsciously using this power for ten years before the start of the story, first having been triggered to survive what would have been an otherwise fatal car accident, and even used it several times during the story before she finally became self-aware of it.
• Re:Zero: This is Subaru's signature power which he dubs "Return by Death" where every time he dies, he will reset the time loop to a preset time and will have to relive the events again to try and prevent either his death or the demise of the various allies and friends he makes in the other world of Lugunica. The concept is also fairly harshly Deconstructed as this is the only power Subaru has, and he's otherwise just an ordinary, if athletically fit, human being in a World of Badass, with pretty terrible magic skillsets when he tries his hand at improving his combat potential, so the only real advantage the power affords him is retaining knowledge of the future. The series also pulls no punches in showing that rewinding time by dying hurts Subaru really badly, and he retains the memory his painful demise right up to the point his consciousness slips away, which can often take quite a while, in one particularly gruesome case, Subaru is Devoured by the Horde and has an understandable Freak Out upon reviving from that particular death. A condition attached to his ability is that Subaru also cannot tell others about his time-looping, otherwise he runs the risk of them being struck dead in front of him, which combines with his mounting trauma to give Subaru variations of PTSD from his multiple loops and contribute to several cases of Poor Communication Kills, as Subaru might gain knowledge of the future to come, but he cannot explain how or why he knows of these events to be without inventing several plausible excuses to deceive his allies. Despite being able to retain his memories, nothing else returns with Subaru when he starts the loop, so he cannot train and improve his combat potential overtly beyond retaining some muscle memory of certain skills. Subaru also has no control over when his loop starts or returns him to, so if he dies he has no idea of how far back he'll be allowed to return and alter the future. In several cases this has resulted in Subaru being stuck with the consequences of his decisions and no way to fix them, such as making a fool of himself in front of the royal knights and receiving a public beating and humiliation in return, or being unable to save his valued ally Rem because his 'save point' upon his next demise sends him back to a point after these events have occurred, and he cannot alter or update that save point himself.
• Dragon Ball Super: Angels have this power, which Whis refers to as a "temporal do-over". They can rewind time by up to three minutes, allowing them to undo an event if they deem it catastrophic enough, though they also note that it cannot be done back-to-back.
• Ringo Roadagain from Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Steel Ball Run has the ability to rewind time by 6 seconds. Unlike most examples of this trope, people near him remember what happened before the rewind, and Ringo makes sure to explain his ability to his opponents so that they won't be disoriented.

Comic Books

• Prospero uses magic to rewind time in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to restore the Blazing World after James Bond nukes it.
• Zatanna had a one time villain named Backslash, a British chav that inexplicably acquired a fairy enchanted sword (modeled after clock hands) that allowed him to rewind short periods of time. Along with allowing him to avert blows, reversing time completely nullified Zatanna's Sdrawkcab Speech based spellcasting. She had to improvise palindrome spells to work around this.

Film

• The Omega 13 from Galaxy Quest has the ability to rewind time by about thirteen seconds. They comment that it's just long enough to undo a bad decision like Jason does after Sarris raids the bridge.
• In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Eye of Agamotto (introduced in Doctor Strange) is also the Time Stone, and can be used to reverse time, among other things.
• Tenet features a phenomenon called "inversion". To sum it up, it's when the entropy of objects or people is "inverted", making them move backward through time. This leads to a fight where the end of the fight for one is the start of the fight for the other. They are both the same person. Basically, while watching this movie your brain explodes backwards and your genitals explode forwards.

Literature

• This is how Rebecca Sisko's Avatar power manifests in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch. On two occasions when she was in danger and knew it was too late for anyone to save her, she instinctively rewound time to before things got that bad, and then sent out a burst of energy that attracted rescuers. On the first occasion, when the rescuers still arrived too late, she rewound time again, but this time it seemed to be localised, so the rescuers reached her "earlier".
• Ta Shi Zhujiao: Whenever Yu Ru Bing dies, the world rewinds back to 30 minutes ago because she's the protagonist, which means she cannot be dead. At first she takes advantage of this dozens of times just to annoy the system, but after that the next and final time she uses this ability is to save Tang Han Qiu who had been killed by the latter's adopted brother.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons: AD&D 2nd Edition supplement Tome of Magic. The Reverse Time spell causes time to go backwards for the caster and their party. Any damage or other loss the party members have suffered from their opponent's attacks in the last 1-4 minutes is negated.

Western Animation

• Miraculous Ladybug: Wielders of the Snake Miraculous possess an ability called "Second Chance" - they can mark a certain moment, and then rewind to that moment as many times as necessary, so long as the rewind is done within five minutes of the initial moment. So far, both Adrien Agreste (as Aspik, and then as Snake Noir) and Luka Couffaine (aka Viperion) have used the Miraculous onscreen, with Luka being the apparent primary snake hero (as Adrien is also Chat Noir).

Other

• The undo feature (usually the Ctrl-Z button combo) in every editing software nowadays is essentially this, allowing you to revert any changes to a document you've made recently.

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