- 6/22/2025
Dive into the captivating world of TIME TREKER, a roguelike that blends time travel with unique gameplay mechanics! Despite some early criticisms, this game is shaping up to be a standout in 2024. Join me as I explore its challenging start, intriguing time manipulation features, and how it evolves into a thrilling adventure. Watch to discover why I believe this game could redefine the survivors-like genre! Don't forget to check out my full review and share your thoughts on this unique roguelike experience!
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00:00hey what's up everyone today I'll be talking about a game called time
00:08trackers which I've been playing a lot lately if you rather a no commentary I
00:13have a gameplay only video of the game feel free to click over watch over that
00:16if you prefer so this game is a time travel themed roguelike survivors like
00:23by fuse games and just in case you're not familiar with it survivors like when
00:27I say that I mean it's like vampire survivors which is another bullet
00:30heaven roguelike game very popular so it's very similar to that the time
00:35travel theme is very cool you're kind of a futuristic soldier that's traveling
00:40through time and fixing a timeline not really sure what you're fixing but
00:46you're fixing it's not a timeline so the game is still in early access which I'm
00:49totally okay with there's a few drawbacks to that they haven't released all the
00:53characters the maps might be a little bit limited in the missions and things like
00:57that but it's okay they pulled together a lot of great stuff here and I think
01:00it's a really great theme too you don't see this very much so here's some things
01:04that I think it does really well so you get an idea of the game so first off the
01:09things that I think are really cool about this game so dying does not mean a
01:12failure so to kind of explain what I mean by that a lot of survivor likes although
01:18you have upgrades for more lives you don't always have that but usually these
01:24games you can like pay pay coins or pay whatever the the the whatever it is how
01:30you upgrade outside of the actual missions to get extra lives or an extra
01:34life during it but usually when you die it's done so in time trackers it has a
01:39system where there's four sections of the map and the idea is you need to hit an
01:43impact number so that's like an impact to the timeline and you have to get to 200
01:48and you can do this kind of however you want so whether you finish a mission that
01:52has one objective that may give you 10 impact points or you might have another
01:56mission that has two objectives and you get five and five or something like that
02:00it changes a little bit but if you fail the mission you're pulled out of the
02:06timeline you don't actually die so they whoever is running the operation for you
02:10they pull you out you're not actually dead and you can keep moving forward but
02:14not only do can you keep moving forward but you can also redo a lot of the
02:18missions they can put you back in the timeline and you try to fix it again and
02:22you just have to pay some of the currency which are like time crystals so if you
02:26complete the mission after that you still get the impact points so it's kind of
02:30cool system because so even if you fail you can either choose to move forward to
02:33more missions or you can go back once you get more crystals and replace some of
02:38the missions to get more impact and as long as you get that impact by the end of
02:42the game and again there's four sections so there's a lot of missions to do you
02:45can still win the game so I thought it was a kind of cool system it's not just you die you die you're
02:50done you can still keep going and you kind of play it out however you feel like
02:53it I think this is a really cool system because it eliminates a lot of the idea of
02:57RNG just kind of killing your build you still have to be mindful of what you're
03:02doing what your upgrades are but sometimes you play other roguelikes and
03:06the RNG just sometimes it's just really bad and so for example like Hades I
03:11absolutely love Hades my favorite roguelike probably out there but sometimes
03:15you get RNG on the the boons that you get you just you just know you're not
03:21gonna win so it kind of eliminates that idea because you can go back and do
03:24different things or you can just keep on going and hope you hope you do well so I
03:28thought that was really cool let's talk about upgrades in this game there is a lot
03:32going on so obviously in roguelike there's the main focus is always making
03:37your build so what is your character gonna be like what kind of upgrades do you
03:42give what kind of skills do you get what kind of upgrades do you put on top of
03:45those skills stuff like that plenty of roguelikes have things where weapons are
03:49partnered with upgrade items or some version of that so time trackers has
03:54weapons and not only do you have so you have your weapons you can unlock up to
03:58six of them you start off with like one or two and then you can unlock more as you
04:03go you can pick whatever your style is whether you want bullet weapons lasers
04:07weapons that hover around you flame weapons whatever it might be but one
04:12thing to keep in mind if you quit more than one of the same type of weapon it
04:15creates a more powerful effect which is a really kind of a cool idea so like one
04:19of the games I was playing in I picked I unlocked all six I had a good variety
04:24weapons but then I added on three rocket launchers of the same type and those
04:28would kind of shoot out different patterns now that I got three of them so
04:31that was kind of a cool system so in addition to the weapons every weapon can
04:36have four attachments and these are like your upgrades so some of them are
04:40unlocked already when you unlock it but most of them you have to unlock those
04:43those slots as well for attachments these attachments can do a ton of things from
04:48altering the patterns to making them stronger giving them knockback giving them
04:53freezing giving them flame some of them giving the health which is really
04:57important so already we have weapons up to six pick all kinds of different ones
05:03you have four attachments you can put on every single one and you
05:06you can create kind of unique effects with all of them on top of that you have
05:09system enhancements so you have you have eight slots for system and hammer
05:13enhancement so these will automatically upgrade when you when you get more of
05:18them and by the way that's the same thing for the other ones too the upgrade
05:21system for upgrading weapons attachments system enhancement enhancements and void
05:27relics you can upgrade them to like level five or so something like that it
05:32changes a little bit for some of them but when you get the same thing you can use
05:36that same thing to upgrade the ones that you currently have so that's kind of cool
05:41it's just a neat system you you can either keep some lower if you want but
05:45everything ends up being useful because so you either use it to upgrade or you
05:49recycle it to get time crystals to buy other things or unlock other things so
05:53system enhancements these are gonna be at the bottom of your screen these are
05:57just random different types of upgrades you can get a whole bunch of them you can
06:01fill the bottom your screen these just give you extra stats extra regen extra HP
06:06and they all do different stuff so this is another level of upgrades and last one
06:12is void relics and these are the orange ones here these ones you have eight
06:16slots that you can put them in and you can they again they upgrade when you get
06:20if you get another one and say you have a level one of one you get another of the
06:25same type it'll just upgrade it so those keep going up too so again we got a lot
06:30going on but in addition to that outside of the missions just like most roguelikes you can
06:35upgrade your base stats so your base stats are survival combat agility and focus but those are
06:42not just one stat each of those has at least five stats built into it that when you upgrade the
06:48one it upgrades all of those I think the last one I think focus has like seven or
06:52something like that but all of them have at least five and you can hover over them to see
06:56exactly what they do but those are the ones that are done outside outside of the missions
07:00within your round within the the entire run but outside of the actual missions where you're playing
07:08so in addition so that's the upgrade system which I think is pretty detailed especially for an early
07:14access game I think they they could add some stuff but we'll talk about what I think they could do
07:18later but already it's very very solid for what they've done the characters so let's talk about the
07:23characters they only have a couple in the early access what I thought was really interesting about
07:27this one is the characters have different abilities and you don't see that too much in
07:32roguelike games uh for example the first character that you play that you're kind of forced to play
07:38because the other ones aren't unlocked yet his ability is the dash so that's a pretty common thing
07:42in roguelikes dash but not all characters in this have the dash so for example the second character
07:48instead of dash she has like an artillery bombardment that you can that you can shoot
07:53out everywhere and it uses uh all all abilities use like energy um so it's just different and not
07:59a lot of roguelikes are like that the only one that even really comes to mind is like crafty
08:04survivors if you ever played that that has a system where you have kind of like different characters
08:08that are jobs so it has like there's like a uh there's like a cook there's a tailor I think
08:13there's a gardener there's a jeweler I think is when they just came out with a new update
08:17but all of them have very very different skills and this is kind of like that where
08:22each character is very different and what it does is you have to think a little bit about more what
08:27kind of upgrades you're getting because like the first guy has a dash so when you start getting to
08:31the bosses that which the bosses have a lot of bigger like hit radius um you can dash out of the
08:37way that's harder to do with the second character so you got to think about well I need to upgrade my
08:42speed somehow otherwise when you start getting to the bosses it gets really hard to to
08:47dodge out of their hits so I thought that was that was an interesting thing I liked it uh and
08:52probably the the last thing I think that was really cool about this is there's really no easy
08:57overpowered builds and now don't get me wrong I like a good power build I like playing vampire
09:03survivors and just creating a crazy uh build where I'm almost unstoppable I have a I have a short
09:11that I made a while ago if you go take a look at it I I made a build and it was really it was just
09:15by accident I was just getting things that I thought look cool and I I would never die I was
09:20that level like a thousand fifty uh and it was just going higher and higher and higher so that
09:25that's cool too and if that's how the game is built that I'm perfectly fine with it I'm not saying it's
09:28bad but I think this was cool because it required this the system they have in time trackers is cool
09:34because it requires you to think about okay what upgrades am I going to put on each gun
09:38what makes more sense what do I need to focus on early um do I need to focus on like health
09:44upgrades and things like that that way that way I stay alive um and what do I need to are the things
09:49that I want to keep or should I recycle everything and spend it on stats and things like that
09:53um but I think it's really cool and and when you partner this with like the dying doesn't really mean
09:58failure I think it becomes very interesting because you you got to think about your build you got to
10:04think about well do I keep moving forward do I go back and and start to replace some of these and
10:09try to get more stuff uh also during the missions you can leave early once you get your objectives so
10:15I think that's kind of cool um because then you got to think about well do I want to get the
10:20objectives and get more impact and possibly get more upgrades too or do I just want to pull out and
10:25go on to the next mission so it's it's up to you you get to choose um you will start to feel
10:31the challenge later on if you fail too many missions though um because you'll start to fall
10:36behind in damage output that's something I noticed really quickly so that's just something to think
10:39about but those are the couple things that I thought were really cool about this so far uh you'll
10:44probably see the same thing while you're playing I know with more updates we'll see more stuff come
10:47out but these are kind of my first impressions of stuff that I thought really set this one apart
10:51so here's a couple hints uh that I want to share with you as I was playing so first off take a look at
10:56the top of your screen uh these are your impact rewards I had no idea these existed they were it
11:03probably said in the tutorial but I tend to kind of not listen to some stuff and try to skip uh skip
11:08through it a little bit my fault if it was in there so these are impact rewards every time you get
11:14impact out of this number you get a reward at the top and they're very helpful because you can see a
11:18lot of them are crystals and then later on uh those little squares that you see you see are upgrades
11:23outside of your run so there's even another level of upgrades you can upgrade um which permanently
11:29change all the characters um but make sure and collect those because even just the crystals is
11:35a big help those will let you get a stat or two very early in the game um again I mentioned this
11:41earlier most missions can be redone if you fail or if you only get one of the two objectives so if you
11:48get if a mission has two objectives if you finish one it'll consider it complete but you
11:53can still go back and get the other one to get the impact and you're obviously getting the levels
11:58and the experience too so it's kind of a win-win I don't see a whole lot of reason not to go back
12:03and do it unless you're really just trying to rush through it but again once you start getting like
12:07through that second section of the map into the third if you haven't put some stats and put some
12:15upgrades into damage output you'll start to really feel it because it gets hard to uh to kill a lot of
12:21stuff um domain construction tiles okay so domain construction tiles I haven't really talked about
12:26the map or what the stuff does this is kind of like a like a roulette wheel or like a like a presser
12:33luck type wheel it kind of picks two or three things out of it that are bonuses for you and you just get
12:38them um sometimes you get crystals sometimes you get upgrades sometimes you get system enhancements
12:43all kinds of different things um but you can keep in mind you can re-roll those so I to be honest I
12:49typically don't I just take whatever is there but if you look at everything that's on there you can
12:53decide and say hey I don't really like these or I'm look I'm going for something specific let me
12:58re-roll this and get some free because it's really just a free stuff tile is what it is
13:02uh second I'm not really second but lastly if I were to think about priorities as I'm playing this
13:09game this is just my recommendation again a lot of people play rolex very differently my recommendation
13:14in this particular one is your first priority should be unlocking weapon slots I would definitely
13:20up unlock minimum three within the first section you could probably even go more but within that
13:27first section of map you need to get to at least three weapon slots my second priority is getting
13:33healing attachments it's a little heart symbol and they can go on to any weapon that makes it so
13:38you're getting life whenever you're doing damage this becomes absolutely necessary later on the game
13:44because there's really not a lot of methods of getting health I mean there's a few out there
13:49you can get stat upgrades you can get system enhancements and stuff like that but I think
13:54that health that health uh attachment on weapons is really going to be your biggest one and later on
13:59the game I think it's necessary and and keep in mind too you can run two or three of them um since
14:06you have six weapons you can put a health upgrade and they each have four attachment slots you can put
14:11that health upgrade on up to on on as many as you want really and it's it's really helpful so that's
14:17just a few of my uh my recommendations when you start to play hopefully that helps you out so here's
14:22some things that I think they need to make sure and address during early access I mentioned a couple
14:26of these earlier but first off more characters with more variety so it looks like they have about six
14:33people six characters planned I think they should aim for at least 12 I mean you've got games out
14:38there like like vampire survivors which have a ton I mean vampire survivors probably has I don't even
14:43know now 30 or 40 maybe even more but the and not that there's a massive difference between a lot of
14:50those characters sometimes it's only just a small stat difference or maybe they start with an upgraded
14:54weapon or something like that which is fine but it's fun to unlock all those characters which is usually
14:59the point it's fun to to play the game in different ways or find weird objectives and that's I think
15:04that's really the point of it being in vampire survivors like that is you're doing all these
15:08strange things and unlocking these characters so it's fun I think they should aim for more six I mean
15:13six would be fine but I think they should go for a lot more than that uh more more mission variety
15:18most of the objectives in the game are pretty simple things like hey activate two of these light
15:24beacons hey activate uh three supply beacons or supply drops uh kill a thousand uh monsters or kill
15:33500 flying monsters or kill 10 range monsters or whatever it might be I just think they should uh
15:39they definitely need more uh variety in that uh maybe make some more objective based things like hey
15:47it's not just about killing this or collecting this it's about protecting this area like a king of the
15:53hill type objective or something like that I just think they should they should broaden what mission
15:57what the mission objectives are it would just make it a lot more fun uh I mean this is probably a
16:03simple thing to say but more guns and more unique items I think the gun variety in the game is
16:08really good I tended to go towards specific ones and I just stuck with them so I didn't always branch
16:13out to a lot of different things um but one thing I think they need to change and I put this in my
16:18steam review in a couple places they need they need more visual differences of the guns uh very
16:24specifically too for the the bullet weapons a lot of times I couldn't really tell if my bullet
16:29weapons were being effective or what they were killing or how much they were killing because I
16:34couldn't really see the graphic happening it was really hidden behind everything else that was going
16:38on so I think they need to change that visual part of it even if it's just to feel like you have more
16:44variety but it'll definitely improve things and it'll help you really understand what's going on and
16:49what's what what weapons are being effective and what's really helping you um I would like to I think
16:55it'd be cool to see a level of like triggerable weapons most of all the weapons that you play with
17:00just kind of happen and they fire which is fine but and you do aim them a little bit but I think
17:04it'd be cool to have ones that you could trigger like mines or throw a grenade or whatever it might
17:10be just something that you can uh something that's a little bit more active and rather than the whole
17:15passive side of the game you do have the ability the that use uh I play on mouse and keyboard so it
17:21use with space bar so it's dash for the one or it's the artillery uh shot for the for the second
17:27character I just think more things that you can trigger uh rather that are active and not passive
17:32I think would be a lot of fun um the last one that I think they might want to rethink is the rounds
17:40can be a little long or the runs can be a little long I mentioned earlier that they have four sections
17:45I think this might turn off some players um the missions themselves are short they're usually
17:50like four minutes five minutes but the whole round has these big four sections which take a while
17:57um a lot of roguelikes are on the 20 or 30 minute model for the whole run so I think this might not
18:04appeal to everyone uh it does auto save your progress so you can stop at any time and come back to play it
18:09but it still results in a pretty long run so I think that might turn some players off I think they
18:14need to find some kind of solution for that or maybe some kind of middle ground so that's it for now
18:19uh the game has 35 achievements I love getting roguelike game achievements so this is likely one
18:24I'll get 100 on um really awesome job to the devs I think they did a really good job I think it's a
18:30really unique theme I think they put a lot into the start of this for early access for me to say it's
18:36one of one of my favorite roguelikes right now I've played a ton of roguelikes I think that goes a
18:41long way so a really good job I can't wait for the next update I hope they put a lot more into it and I
18:45can't wait to see more people play it uh thanks to everyone for watching have a great one
18:49so
18:51so
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