I can in all probability sum up Time Bandit’s entire deal by telling you I’ve a gathering with it at 2 pm tomorrow. That is not a joke, or a wry, sideways look at some in any other case very regular and boilerplate recreation mechanic. I actually have to fulfill somebody on this recreation at 2 o’clock on the dot on the third of August, 2023. Look, right here it’s in my calendar:
By that point, a tree I planted could have completed rising, a bridge I am constructing could have completed building, and a few bins I am attempting to maneuver round at work could have completed transferring themselves one area forwards or backwards. It may be a giant day. Till then, although, all there’s to do is wait.
That is Time Bandit, a intentionally laborious work sim the place all of your duties take actual time. You play as… effectively, who is aware of? One other faceless and not too long ago enlisted cadet straight out of the reserve military of labour, put to work shuffling bins round in a cavernous warehouse within the pursuit of “time crystals”: literal ossified chunks of time that your capitalist overlords are taking from you along with all that alienated labour.
It is agonising. Even the best duties take at the very least an hour, and others take a full day. Nearly all of them chip away at your quickly dissipating reserves of vitality, and what you are paid barely covers the price of buying the instruments you have to hold doing the work in future. It is half Cart Life, half Steel Gear Strong, half idle recreation, and enjoying it’s actually a chore. I like it? I believe I like it
A matter of time
Time Bandit is a political satire, devoted to teasing out the darkly comedian absurdities of our—my, your—day-to-day existence below an more and more tumbledown type of worldwide capitalism. To capital and its human avatars—your bosses—you are only a useful resource: An agglutination of labour hours to be drained and tossed apart when spent. The streets are chilly and naked, the seaside is beneath the paving stones, and one of many first duties it offers you is to cut down the literal final tree within the close by forest to be able to construct a bridge (you’ll be able to plant a brand new one, it takes 24 hours).
So it takes some time to play. Reality be instructed, I am not to this point into it but. I might be additional, however I believe to unlock the facet of the sport during which I begin embezzling time crystals from work I’ve to make that assembly I used to be speaking about earlier. I used to be initially meant to have it at 10 am right now, however I used to be double-booked. An actual-life assembly outmoded my digital one in significance. My contact—a suspicious and non-copyright-infringing scuba-equipped spy named Longtail Duck—contacted me angrily on the radio once I clocked again into the sport at round 11 this morning.
We needed to reschedule, which suggests I’ve to attend one other, ah, 22 hours to see what it’s he needs from me.
Within the meantime, I’ve to are likely to my chores and handle my dwindling vitality, remembering to test in as my duties full to progress them to the following stage. It is a sort of banal idle recreation, nevertheless it’s nonetheless surprisingly partaking.
Many of the weirdos on my radio chafe below this or that side of capital too, and checking in with them each time I return to the sport (time passes whereas it is closed) seems like I am fostering an odd sort of dispirited solidarity. None of us are revolutionaries—although presumably somebody round city is daubing the partitions with these anarchy symbols and hammer and sickles—however we’re all unfulfilled, doomed, alienated. All of us really feel helpless, at the very least proper now, however at the very least we’re all helpless collectively.
However the recreation guarantees greater than what I’ve seen to this point. As soon as I really handle to make my assembly with Longtail Duck, I hope it will not be one other 24-hour wait earlier than I unlock the stealth portion of the sport. Up to now, a lot of the gameplay I’ve skilled has been block-pushing: clearing the best way (one hour at a time) to time crystals that I then return to my bosses for a pittance. I think Longtail will inform me that I could possibly be stealing them as a substitute, sneaking them out between cameras and guards and promoting them for excess of I might get in my paycheque.
In different phrases: I could possibly be claiming my labour, my time, and my stolen surplus worth again from my bosses. All I’ve to do is danger violent retribution and deprivation to do it. I’ll. Somebody has to show the bastards a lesson in spite of everything, and it is a lot simpler to try this in a recreation than it’s to do it in actual life.
As soon as upon a time, a employee going by the title Elastico Gomez wrote among the finest essays I’ve ever learn: An indignant and sensible reflection on their time working at an Amazon warehouse. “I would like all the employees to spend extra time with one another, conspiring in opposition to the corporate, breaking the net of surveillance, of ideology, and looting and smashing all the pieces they will get their fingers on,” the piece concluded. Time Bandit seems like somebody learn that essay and made a recreation out of it. I am unable to look ahead to half two.
