It’s Time is the first game by Willman Interactive, and as far as first games go, it is not a good one. As a random Steam user said in the user reviews section: The dev has managed to make The Room of video games. This user recommends playing it because it’s funny and because of how poorly done it is, but that should not be a reason to play such a thing. It is not a good game. No doubt, the dev put in quite a lot of effort, as this appears to be a one-man operation, but a fundamental thing that visual novels need is good writing, which does not have good writing.
 

It seems cruel to be too mean about a game like this because it wasn’t made by a studio but by someone who no doubt wants to make games, but It’s Time is bad. The writing, in terms of grammar, is fine, but in terms of everything else, it is not. You are placed inside a story about a terrible incident, and now you must go back in time to fix it. You effectively choose the beginning and then see it through, although it does purport to track your choices and change things accordingly.

You then run through the motions and do a bunch of busy work until your choices ultimately lead to an over-the-top calamity, which is pretty funny, to be honest. You want to save your wife, which leads to a tsunami because… well, because like… the butterfly effect and messing with the space-time continuum. It’s hard to take it seriously at the best of times, but the writing is the thing that is the most likely thing to be taken seriously because nothing else should be.

It’s Time is an ugly game. For some bizarre reason, it uses stock photos rather than the ordinary illustrated/anime style you’d find in most visual novels. It is, in a word, weird. It’s Time is very weird. You get these stock images of houses and rooms and then decide which doors to go through, leading to a new stock photo room. The stock photos also often have things added to them, things that the dev wanted you to interact with, but because they’re not part of the original image and because the dev isn’t good at Photoshop, it just looks like a random something dropped into the middle of an unrelated image. For instance, an “audio player” is placed on a bed, but it doesn’t cause the sheets to crease or anything, so it clearly isn’t there; it’s just been copy-pasted there from somewhere else.

Furthermore, It’s Time is random. There are these random videos slotted between dialogue frames. So, you’ll chat to someone about something, and then there will be a looping film with a mysterious figure out of nowhere. But because it loops after about five seconds, it looks ridiculous. This could be considered funny by someone, but because of the seemingly severe dead narrative that never leaves room for any humor, it’s jarring to see it seemingly everywhere.

None of that is even to mention the character portraits, which need to be said. Like all visual novels, It’s Time pops a little image of whoever is talking somewhere on the screen, so you know who’s talking, but It’s Time goes way beyond that. You get these glorious stock photo arms-crossed portraits of men who have not been cut out properly. So, you can see the background they were cut out of!

As has been demonstrated, It’s Time is not exactly a grand time in the visuals or writing department. And those character cutouts are rather great. But there’s still music to contend with. And that isn’t good either! The music and sound effects often come out of nowhere, loop, and are also taken from creative commons sources. They do not sound great and often throw off the serious tone the dev was going for. Although, why they were going for a serious tone when this could have been adapted into something funny will forever be a mystery.

It isn’t the worst game ever made. Nothing will ever be Assassin’s Creed 1 after all. Heyo! Hot take alert! But in all seriousness, it isn’t the worst thing ever made. It also isn’t good. It wasn’t made well. It’s Time is filled with strange choices. There may be a future for this dev if they put the effort in and maybe get some proper art and maybe, like, play a few visual novels to see how best to do it, but for now, It’s Time comes across as a game that wants to be like Steins; Gate but doesn’t have the writing talent behind it. It is less than an hour long and sold at less than $1 when writing. So, maybe you get what you’re paying for! But, for context, Christine Love’s first few visual novels are entirely free and fantastic. And her later visual novels Get in the Car, Loser!, the ones that add more gameplay, like this game is trying to do, are also fantastic.
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed