"The time during which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labor-power he has bought from him. If the worker consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist."
"But what if instead of producing things for exchange, we shared them freely according to what people needed? What if we put that first instead of offering to a small few, on the backs of the labor of others, the chance to live a life extended beyond its natural limits?"
— Longtail Duck
Time Bandit is an Episodic Life Sim / stealth-based Sokoban puzzler for PC taking place in Real Time. As a nondescript worker of the Chronos megacorp, your job is to clean up a facility where they once harvested and stored completely-unimportant glowing "minerals" and bring them back to the company. Except when you arrive under the supervision of your Pointy-Haired Boss, you realize this job sucks - not only do you have to pay out of your own pocket for every use of your inefficient tools, but everything from pushing one crate to compacting trash takes thirty real-world minutes or longer.
Fortunately, you're not stuck like this; an encounter with enigmatic cigarette-smoking scuba diver Longtail Duck informs you that they're not just minerals, but Time Crystals - crystals with the power to slow, fast-forward, and reverse time - and you've just handed one over for $2 and an energy drink. Not only that, but once they have enough, the capitalists intend to fast-forward time enough to work generations of laborers to death in seconds and continue accruing nigh-infinite capital until the sun burns out.
Of course, if they never get those crystals, then you can avert that. It's now up to you to literally steal back your time and maybe get some well-deserved payback while you're at it. Or, you could always take the easy route and do your job as asked...
Part One, Appendages of the Machine, was released in July 2023. You can purchase it on Steam
or Itch.io.
Not to be confused with the 1983 adventure game for the TRS-80 or the movie.
Time Bandit contains examples of:
- Absurdly Long Wait: Moving a single crate takes thirty real-world minutes. Want to grow a tree? That'll be twenty-four hours. A single six-move sliding-block puzzle can take days.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- No matter what - even if you're in jail - you'll receive $5 as your daily wage every single day. This means it's impossible to permanently block off all paths and forklifts; it may take weeks, but you'll always be able to afford more tools with which to fix things.
- The first time you're sent to jail for an unexpected game shutdown, you have the option to tell Mr. Pinscer that you were forced to close it by an unexpected bug. If so, he'll let you off the hook and ask you to file a bug report. Related, the game's official FAQ offers a workaround to avoid jail in cases where it's genuinely not your fault that the game closed, such as a crash or a power failure.
- If you're trying to escape after being caught and are forced to take a radio call - which appears without warning and locks you in place for the duration - then the alarm will disable itself and all projectiles will vanish so that the player can't be detained through unlucky timing.
- Anti Poop-Socking: Performing tasks and staying awake requires energy - which is only restored through consumables or resting in your apartment - so if you don't have a specific task in mind, it's better to go home and catch some Zs. Otherwise, if your energy runs low and you're not at home, you'll be tossed in jail - which is a twelve hour penalty at least.
- Beautiful Void: The unnamed city in which you work is almost entirely devoid of people. No cars pass on the roads, and the traffic lights creak as they sway in the wind. It's you and some six-odd people to share an entire city.
- Blatant Lies: While stealing crystals off-shift, calling Mr. Pinscer - which is implided to be a video call - leads to this.Mr. Pinscer: I hope you're resting up for your shift later.You: (With a Time Crystal on your back) Um... yeah, that's what I'm doing.
- Block Puzzle: Making routes to the time crystals is done through Sokoban-style sliding block puzzles. Of course, since every move costs money and there's no way to undo a move except for physically pushing it back - which can take upwards of thirty minutes - it's better to spend fifteen minutes making certain you've found the fastest solution than to make a guess and potentially lose hours of labor.
- Bullet Hell: If you're caught off-shift by one of the facility's robot guards, they'll begin spamming an absolutely ludicrous barrage of tranquilizer darts to knock you out. It's entirely possible to dodge the projectiles and escape anyway, but good luck.May Acton: The good news is that the guards, at least, can't actually aim at you. Instead they initiate a burst fire program that gets released in a pattern around them. The bad news is, since they can't aim, I... sort of designed them to shoot A LOT of bullets...
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Get caught trespassing off-shift and knocked out? Close the game without saving? The worst that happens is you're thrown in jail for twelve hours and forced to take a break with no loss of gas or cash.
- Expy: Longtail Duck is a cigarette-smoking, gruff-voiced, stealth specialist named after an animal who's attempting to dismantle a capitalist-controlled conspiracy. Are we sure that's not Solid snake?
- No Fair Cheating: Close the game in the facility - most likely to undo a bad move - and you'll be sent straight to jail for up potentially twelve real-world hours for "falling asleep on company property."
- Pointy-Haired Boss: Mr. Pinscer, your supervisor. All he seems to be any good at is throwing you in prison for not doing your job and forgetting to tell you how to do your job.Longtail Duck: Did you know you can enter first-person view by pressing ctrl?You: What! No one told me.Longtail Duck: Ridiculous! The boss really should have mentioned all the controls in the tutorial.
- Real Time: The pace of gameplay is synced up with the real world. Your character takes eight hours to rest up, trees take a day to grow, crates take thirty minutes to move, and even whether you're on-shift or off-shift is dependent on the actual time of day. If a character asks when you're free tomorrow, they don't mean the next in-game day - they mean tomorrow.
- Save Point: Returning to your apartment saves the game, framed as your character going to sleep - and closing the game anywhere else will result in you being arrested for falling asleep on the job to prevent you from easily undoing a mistake.
- Stealth-Based Game: Being in the facility off-shift is absolutely not permitted, so to prevent theft robot guards are put in place after the prologue. Guards have vision cones, a small degree of hearing, and several hundred tranquilizer darts to use on any would-be trespassers. Hiding behind corners, observing patrol patterns, and ducking under cover is thus essential to make it inside to the block puzzles - and once you've gotten a crystal, you have to make it out with it too. Get caught, and the crystal is lost forever - but you do get $2 and an energy drink as a consolation prize.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Zig-zagged. Your limited energy bar doesn't drain while in a conversation on the radio, and this is exploitable: As long as you're talking, even though you're not consuming energy time is still passing. That said, time is still passing, which means if you're too busy chatting on the radio to see the guard sneaking up behind you it's entirely possible to be caught mid-conversation.May Acton: You didn't expect the world to pause for you to call someone, did you?
- The Tetris Effect: Discussed. Longtail Duck mentions how back in the day, people who obsessed over Tetris would see blocks fall when they closed their eyes. He says it's a sign of building a skill through repetition - just like you're doing now, and it's well within possibility that you're already experiencing it before he brings it up.
