Green Game: TimeSwapper review for PS Vita

In its own way, Green Game: TimeSwapper is kind of admirable. It’s a sequel to the profoundly mediocre Red Game Without A Great Name, but rather than simply repackaging that game with a new name and dominant color, developers ifun4all opted to create an entirely new game, with all new mechanics.

The good news about this is that it means Green Game has none of the flaws that plagued Red Game. That game, after all, expected players to somehow develop translucent hands, which was just about the only way you could simultaneously see the area ahead of your character and maneuver it around as quickly as was demanded.

Unfortunately, this just means is that ifun4all have given themselves a chance to make all new mistakes. This time out, the core mechanic is that you switch different tools and obstacles on and off depending on which way you’ve swiped the screen. (Why this is considered TimeSwapping, I’m not sure, but I’ll go with it.) While I could certainly see a scenario in which that works well…it’s not this one. Green Game is dragged down by the fact there’s no rhyme or reason to how quickly you can switch time. You can drag your finger across the screen quickly and have the switch happen at the speed of frozen molasses, or you can lightly touch a single spot and have everything switch instantly. For a game that demands a surprising degree of precision, it does a lousy job of allowing you to be precise.

And that, unfortunately, means there’s not much reason to want to play it. Sure Green Game: TimeSwapper looks nice — like Red Game, it makes the most of a two-tone color palette — but nice graphic design is no substitute for nice level design. With one more game still to go in the series, judging from the opening sequence (expect a Blue Game in the not-so-distant future), there’s still time for the latter to catch up with the former, but for now, that doesn’t give much reason to check it out.