Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior Preview

At Geoff Keighley’s Summer time Recreation Fest, Quantic Dream’s Highlight label revealed Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior. The second I noticed it, I knew I needed to test it out, and fortunately, it was at Play Days, the place I bought to play a preview construct. I’m excited to say that to this point, it doesn’t meet my expectations – it blew them out of the water.

In Lysfanga, you play as Imë, the protector of the realm who has time-shifting powers. Whereas it would look loads like a hack-and-slasher, it’s actually extra of a tactical puzzle recreation. As a substitute of considering with portals although, you suppose with time clones. It sounds deceptively easy, however it shortly will get difficult.

While you enter a brand new area, you get an opportunity to survey the entire battlefield. You solely have a handful of seconds to clear it of enemies, however each time you run out of time (or hit a button), you financial institution up a clone that does what you simply did. Then you definitely begin over once more, understanding your clone will care for no matter you probably did beforehand. Once more, deceptively easy.

However then Lysfanga introduces some complexities, like twin enemies. These linked foes need to be killed inside a pair seconds of one another or else they respawn. Imë can’t do it alone, however when you kill one on the primary spherical, then it’s all about timing your second spherical excellent. Then there are protect enemies, which must be distracted by one clone so one other can defeat it from behind.

The phases themselves even have some obstacles you need to take into consideration. For instance, you’ll see two coloured gates all through a stage, and one coloration is closed up. While you go by way of the opposite coloration, they swap, closing a technique whereas opening one other. Now, you need to take into consideration the larger image, juggling what number of of your clones are on the market and which coloured gates they undergo. 

Different gates can solely be opened by destroying a sure crystal. In fact, if that crystal is behind a brief maze of coloured gates, that’s if you kind of need to reverse engineer the answer. Generally, you need to burn a fast clone that makes a beeline to a crystal, simply to allow your copies to finish the remainder of the stage. 

What I recognize most in Lysfanga is that it reframes the best way fight feels and works.

It’s conundrums like that, whereas juggling every thing else, that makes Lysfanga such a nice shock. It’s greater than what it seems to be like on the floor, and determining an answer is so satisfying. Whereas I didn’t have time to be completely pleased with the best way I completed some phases, if I had extra time, I’d completely hold re-running a number of phases for a greater efficiency. 

Every stage has a restricted variety of clones, so you possibly can’t simply spam your rewind powers. Moreover, there’s a time-attack mechanic that encourages a number of retries so you possibly can end a stage as shortly as doable. Everytime you full a stage underneath a sure time, you achieve extra sources, so it’s seemingly price doing within the full construct to improve the totally different weapons you’ll get.

What I recognize most in Lysfanga is that it reframes the best way fight feels and works. It’s all about cooperating with your self, making a finely choreographed symphony of motion. You possibly can even tag enemies with copy primary, and when copy two hits them, it does huge injury. However the finish purpose remains to be determining tips on how to defeat each enemy in a stage, slipping previous obstacles in essentially the most environment friendly manner doable. 

Positive, Lysfanga seems to be like an motion recreation, however it’s a much more cerebral recreation beneath the floor. You’re not mastering combos or timing the right parry right here. It’s extra about utilizing your time properly and determining one of the best methods to make the dominoes fall. And I can’t wait see what the remainder of the sport seems to be like when it launches later this yr on Steam and Epic Video games Retailer. 

Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior was previewed at Summer time Recreation Fest Play Days. Screenshots have been offered by Sand Door Studio.