What is time? Time is an invisible prison. We are its prisoners, trapped in the chains of causality, moving ever forward. Time is a garden of forking paths. We diverge among countless choices, only to converge again through countless others. Or perhaps time is a dream — where future and past meet in a haze between waking and sleeping, and the present is but a moment of truth.
Gary, a traveler, wakes up in a prison. He gains the ability to control time loops. With the help of an illusion of a friend, he collects golden tulips, one after another. He knows he wants to see those people — to offer them the flowers.
Along the way, he meets a little bird thief who steals tulips, a black cat who can travel through paintings but is still waiting for a friend, and even climbs through layers of clouds to glimpse the mysterious Mother Moon. In the end, he has a dream — a dream in which he encounters a giant bird… Flowers fall upon a grave. A friend is already gone. In this moment of truth, nothing remains but the self and its own illusion.
In 2021, I participated in the BOOOM Game Development Jam hosted by Gcores, primarily responsible for the art. The title of our work is the same as the event theme: Time is an Illusion. We developed this puzzle game around the core mechanic of "cyclical patterns."
Visit Gcores for game page and demo
Inspiration — Phenakistoscope
The gameplay is rooted in the cyclical patterns of things (e.g., an egg becomes a bird, flowers bloom and wither). When we first analyzed the theme "Time is an Illusion," we came across an animation device called the phenakistoscope. Its circular layout records the changing states of objects frame by frame in animated time.
Core Mechanic — Next Frame
During team discussions, we often jokingly called it a "PPT game." The most important action for players is pressing the L key to let time "flow" for a moment, causing most objects in the scene to switch to the next frame.
Mechanic 1 — State (Bird and Flower)
The player interacts with objects at specific stages of their life cycle — for example, locking a bird in a cage while it is still an egg, or jumping to the top of a tree before it has grown tall.
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Mechanic 2 — Reaction (How to Make a Key?)
Objects can only proceed to the next stage of their life cycle when certain conditions are met. For example, a stone struck by lightning turns into a key, or watering a flowerpot makes a flower grow.
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The game presents a poetic atmosphere and offers a rather clever interpretation of the theme. It received much positive feedback during the event that year.