Minima Time is a Platforming game where time is of the essence.  Race against time and explore the world as you attempt to extend your last 10 seconds for as long as possible.  You can play it online for free right here!

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About:

Minima Time was inspired by the Experimental Gameplay Project’s March Theme of ‘10 Seconds’.  It was made over 5 days  in Flash with a total time around 36 hours.  You can learn more about the game’s development process and any future progress here.  The initial gameplay mechanics and core game came together very quickly in the first day.  I believe that a lot of this had to do with the time I spent thinking about the theme and how I would design the game before  I ever sat down in front of the computer.  As a result, when I actually sat down I cranked out the core mechanics of the game.  It definitely helped to reuse some of the graphics I had from Minima Bomber as well.

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How it Fits the Theme:

Minima Bomber fits the 10 second theme since it’s main mechanic and initial state is that you have only 10 seconds to live.  What will you do with only 10 seconds?  How can you make the most of it?

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Minima Time

Click the Picture to Play it Now!

Instructions:

The goal of the game is simple: Extend your last 10 seconds of Life for as long as possible.  Find Checkpoints, Collect Clocks and slow down or stop time to live longer and avoid dangers.  You can fall 1 screen down into the rock area, but if you fall further you’ll die. Check out the little instruction/tutorial in game.

Controls:

The W, A, S, D keys move the player around.
W jumps – press it again to double jump
You can shift time by pressing spacebar. Press it once to slow time, again to stop time, and yet again to resume time.

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Credits:

Everything done by: Mike Gnade
The Jungle Loop Music is freely available by Bebeto on Freesound.org

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Please share this game with your friends, leave us comments and feedback, and discuss the game below:

I was able to finish Minima Time yesterday.  I put some music and sound fx in the game and then just hammered out some annoying bugs and issues.  I’ve already heard from some of the flash portals that the high scores don’t work on their sites (but they do work on ours).  This has to do with Flash’s Cross Domain Policy and I’m hoping that I can write a script that fixes it for everyone.   In the meantime, why not just play it for free on Graduate Games. A lot of yesterday was spent optimizing the game and tweaking certain things.  All in all, I probably put around 36 hours into the game…give or take.  I hope you enjoy the game.  I will likely be uploading the Astral Hunters Teaser Site later today.

Yesterday I spent a few hours trying to finalize the game and sure enough we ran into some major bugs and performance issues.  This resulted in 2 major adjustments that made me sad.  First, I had to get rid of the pipes spewing water since I just couldn’t get performance working right online.  This was a major blow since it was a really cool idea and fun in practice.  The other thin that sucked was that the world was just too big and slowing things down…so I reduce it by about 45% which made everything run great.  This isn’t as big of a loss since I can’t and haven’t made a full loop of the whole world yet…though I’m sure it’s possible.  I’m excited to see how long people will be able to stretch their 10 seconds to.  Ultimately there is a finite amount of time clocks, so everyone will eventually die.  So after a day of cuts and bug squashing, I hope to put in all the final touches today: high scores, instructions, sound/music, etc.

Yesterday, I doodled and worked on designing the world some more. I wanted to add some more cool time affected objects so I put in some simple water and missiles.  When you slow or stop time, you can walk on water.  With time slowed or stopped you can jump on missile smoke trails… of course the missiles themselves are slowed down so the hazard is easier to avoid.  The next step is to get the high scores and menus all working in Flash.  I also need to do sound effects and finish up the singular level/world.  The good news is that we are on schedule for getting this out this weekend.

It’s been a blessing to get the basic platform mechanics coded quickly in the game since they are very similar to Minima Bomber, but it’s also been a curse because having a lot of gameplay working has left me more time to expand the scope of the game.  It’s given me more time to doodle and draw too.  I’ve added moving spike blocks, drawn cave backgrounds, and soldier dudes.  I started adding missiles and want to add some water pipes…but that’s it!  Now that the weekend is over, I will not have as much time to dedicate to the game.  It’s been great that I had the hours to put in to get the game this far in only 2 days (and less than 36 hours) but I need to start finishing things up.  I hope to have the game out and playable by the weekend!  Stay tuned…

I spent most of the day yesterday working on a free game for March’s Experimental Gameplay project.  The theme is 10 seconds so the gameplay revolves around time of course.  In order to get this game done in a decent amount of time, I’ve decided to bring back Minima Bomber.  The game is being done in Flash.  The basic premise is to make the most of your last 10 seconds before you die.  You can extend your ten seconds by slowing down or even stopping time.  Another neat way to extend your time is to take a snapshot image of yourself…this acts as a checkpoint.  There will be 1 large level to explore and I plan on putting in some more time-affected obstacles and global hi scores to see who can make the most of their ten seconds.  I don’t expect to use all 7 days to get this game completed.

Zak recently finished a new ’simplified’ metal tile set. I used our nifty level editor to compare these 2 different tile sets next to one another and take a screen capture.  The left block is the old detailed metal textures we were using.  These looked great in static images, but as we’ve started working on bigger levels, we’ve found that having so many different tiles is annoying and makes the tiles even *more* apparent since it is so hard to blend the detailed textures together.  Ultimately, the simpler tile set to the left ends up looking better in game because you cannot easily see the 32×32 tile grid.  There’s also fewer textures to worry about matching up which makes level design a lot faster.

The Gamer’s Hub reviewed our game Storked this month….better late then never I guess.  They gave it 4 out of 5 stars.  You can read the game review here.

This further solidifies the great deal that is The Graduate Games Bundle – grab both Storked and the Magic Toy Chest for only $19.95.  Feel free to visit the game pages and try the free demos as well.