Description

Time Bandit is a dark life sim where everything takes time. Place down a robot to push a box for you, for example, and it will take an actual half an hour to finish. By saving the game and coming back periodically to make progress, you are invited to explore your habits, rituals, and experience of time in general, particularly as it relates to work and exploitation. Time Bandit is an explicitly anti-capitalist game with a slowly unfolding melodrama of political intrigue, dealing with themes of technological automation, economic crisis, environmental catastrophe, colonialism, and radical change.

History

Time Bandit has been in development by solo developer Joel Jordon for a long time, a process that has turned out to resemble the real-time experience of playing the game. An experiment in the pacing of storytelling, Time Bandit was designed to allow players to integrate the game into their lives in a unique way and give them plenty of time to reflect on the ideas it presents to them while they're playing it--and while they're not. Time Bandit's sources of inspiration include the atmosphere and storytelling of Metal Gear Solid, the political goals of Brechtian theater, and the time-based mechanics of Animal Crossing and Pikmin.

Features

• Manage your money, fuel, and energy while slowly solving puzzles to collect the time crystals and then pull off high-stakes stealthy heists to steal back from your employer.
• Move boxes, grow trees, build bridges, and compact trash--and wait for them to finish.
• A story that unfolds slowly through conversations that work like real-life phone calls. Characters will only call you periodically to advance the story over the course of days and weeks of playtime.
• Your energy meter goes down while you play, and it takes up to 8 real-time hours of good sleep to fill it up all the way.
• Different guard rotations and different consequences for getting caught depending on the time of day when you play.
• Meet characters at the actual meeting times that you set with them.
• Real-time dynamic music.