We attended New Game Plus earlier in the year, and went hands on with a selection of unreleased games, including EMITime..
Personally, I’m a sucker for games with animal protagonists; I really don’t know why they grab me so much, but that’s exactly what led me to queuing up to try EMITime. While in the queue, I got chatting to the developer working on the game from Otterweave Games.
I asked him what had driven him to make a rhythm roguelike, and especially use a grid based combat system. He told me with enthusiasm that he wanted to make something that flowed during combat and took some real skill to master, rather than other rhythm games that have come before that take a more static approach. When I sat down to play, I understood what he meant! I’m a huge fan of rhythm games, so I was very excited to try! We play as one of two current playable characters (although I was assured there are more on the way), Aldrich, a royal engineer. Both his in game sprite and portrait and lovingly made in retro art style, giving me callback to SNES era gaming. We have a basic attack, a special, and different cards we can acquire through each level to build a Beat Deck, a deck of special attacks we can cycle through as we go.
As this is a rhythm game, it heavily rewards you for hitting and moving around its grid on the beat, doing extra damage and maintaining your combo as you move and dodge past enemies. After each level, you acquire a new card for your deck, and when you build your Beat Deck, you must be careful as each card has a Beat Value, and you only have so many Beats you can spend building your deck. You can load it with super powerful spells and attacks, but be ready to rely on your basic attacks more to charge it and maintain that ever important combo.
For a very simple idea, it had deceptive amounts of depth to it. As I got into the groove and found myself hitting the beats more often, I was really jamming along to its fantastic soundtrack and considering my build closely. It took the developer touching my arm and reminding me that I didn’t have to finish the entire thing, but I genuinely could have had I not been brought back to Earth!
EMITime currently has no projected release date, but is available to Wishlist on Steam. Find it here: