TimeQuest

TimeQuest provides plenty of fun and clever puzzles through a light-hearted time-travel theme. The writing is clear and lean, with a bit of whimsy and irony, and the implementation is excellent, creating no game-play problems.

But, the game provides very little direction to the player, resulting in too many save-and-restore puzzles and a lot of aimless wandering at the beginning of the game.

If you make a log of where everything is, for every location and every time frame, before you begin actual game-play, you'll likely enjoy this large, puzzle-heavy text adventure.

TimeQuest is a journey through history in search of a madman who aims to alter it. You can explore 49 different timeplaces ranging from 1361 BC to 1940 AD, as well as your headquarters in 2090. The amount of areas available to explore makes the game somewhat imposing at first, and many puzzles require items from different time periods. Half the fun of this game is exploring all the different times and places, and realizing how your actions in one time period will affect another.

There are two main parts to this game: The puzzles that require fixing what the madman Vettenmyer has altered, and the meta-puzzle of stopping him once and for all. He has left you clues scattered throughout time which seem to point to his whereabouts and a method to reach him. In uncovering this meta-puzzle, the story takes a few twists and turns that make you re-examine everything you thought you knew. It's a delightful twist that makes the game even better.