There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension found its audience by way of shattering the typical barriers between "player" and "game." The operating system argues with you the whole way through as you break fourth walls left and right, smashing around a computer system and jumping from one videogame-universe to the next.
Now the studio's new release Crushed in Time has you following the famous Holmes and Watson duo who appeared in the previous game through a new point-and-click (or click-and-stretch?) narrative mystery that features a unique method of interaction and (as we might expect) looks to break all sorts of meta-layer walls.
The trailer shows off plenty of examples of the interesting and peculiar mode of interacting with the game world that Crushed in Time is built around: clicking on objects in the game world and then holding and dragging your mouse lets you "stretch" and then "fling" them, giving them momentum to send them flying and/or stretching and distorting their shape. It's a pretty unusual and physical idea for a point-and-click adventure style of game, but they did get a few chuckles out of me as I watched objects ricochet around the game's rooms, causing all sorts of ripple effects.
The plot here looks to be a Venn diagram of classic Holmesian detective case tropes and time-travel shenanigans, with a decidedly irreverent and comedic tone that's very much carrying over from the studio's previous title. Following up a meta-layer interface-breaking minigame amalgamation with a more standard mystery detective story is a bit surprising, but between the time travel elements and the odd elastic playground of a game world, I'm sure it'll go far enough off the rails to satisfy. (I felt a bit of concern over the trailer's depiction of a seemingly on-the-nose Victorian damsel-in-distress character, which of course could be misleading. Here's hoping they subvert it in a tasteful way.)
Crushed in Time is available now on Steam with a 20% launch discount until June 24th. There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is not currently on sale, but it does have Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam, which suggests it might be worth checking out anyway.
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