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Timelapse  In Brief: If you liked Myst then buy this now.
 Since I started writing game reviews professionally I have been so inundated by new games that I have no time to play the old ones. While getting every game on the market for free is great, it does have its drawbacks, and one of the main ones is I am probably never going to get the chance to finish "Timelapse".
Timelapse falls into the category of Myst clones. With its pastoral scenery and logical puzzles it can't escape that description. But it is more than that; it is the best Myst clone. It gave me, puzzle for puzzle, picture for picture, what Myst gave me. It is an utterly fantastic game.
I have no idea where my notes are and its been months since I last played the game, but let me tell you what I remember.
"Timelapse" begins with you on the search for some guy (I told you I lost my notes). He's a scientist on the trial of, what else, Atlantis, and he has disappeared. Soon you find a portal that will take you to ancient lands where you will search for the connection to that fabled ancient city (or was it a country?)
At random I started off in Egypt. Egypt was great, very pretty with difficult, ruthlessly logical puzzles. At times I thought I was stuck, but I didn't cheat. "Timelapse" is a game that appeared to be playing fair, telling me that it wasn't going to give me any puzzles that didn't make sense. I believed it and it turned out to be true.
My next stop was an Indian village of some sort. Again, puzzles were logical and hard. However, I did have to cheat a little. Not on logic, but on execution. One was a music puzzle in which the clue was just too fast. I have a pretty good ear for music but I absolutely could not get the sequence. Then there was this arrow I had to fire. This was really nasty, the hints I found recommended saving at a certain place and working from there. It was really pretty objectionable.
I excuse "Timelapse" for both of these puzzles, in that they didn't fail through logic but through execution. I understood the solution, after all. So when I got stuck again and didn't know how to proceed I did not run back to my hints file. I knew there had to be a logical approach and I was sure I could find it. Then I started writing reviews for the New York Times.
Now I get so many games, and I have to check them all out and thoroughly play the ones I choose to review. I almost never make it to the end of a game unless it's very short; I just don't have time. It may be years before I find enough time to go back to Timelapse. But I couldn't let my loyal readers spend any more time not knowing about this game, because what I played was phenomenal (if you like Myst, anyway).
I have been told that Atlantis itself is insanely difficult and at least one person insists that cheating is necessary at that point. Perhaps someday I'll find out for myself. But if you're not receiving 10 new games in the mail every week you might want to try Timelapse. It's just plain cool. -- Charles Herold -2000
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