Crushed In Time Review

Crushed In Time, from developer Draw Me A Pixel, is a point-and-click puzzler that fully embodies the quirkiness, humour, and creativity seen in its predecessor, There Is No Game : Wrong Dimension. While the beloved detective duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, simply appeared in that former title, Crushed In Time is, well, their time to shine (in an extravagant meta fashion).

Early on, Sherlock may take the credit for your intrepid puzzle-solving, but it is absolutely you who's moving items, kickstarting engines, turning rooms upside down, slapping characters (multiple times), and more! In a fourth-wall-breaking fashion, your manipulation of the world is noted by Watson and Holmes in funny ways. Sometimes they consider you a ghost, and other times an alien, but what you really are is the player moving the story along with every click of your mouse.

Equal parts good laughs and thinky moments, I'm definitely happy I got to check it out, granted it's not without unfun hiccups in the puzzle department. Before we get into those, though, let's talk about how you actually go about navigating and solving the conundrums you'll find Sherlock and Watson in.

Crushed In Time contains puzzles that require you to stretch your mind whilst you stretch the environment, literally. The main point-and-click gimmick the game offers is that this world is extremely elastic, even down to the menu options, hint buttons, and skip icon, which is a level of detail I can appreciate. While I initially wondered if that single mechanic would get stale or feel limiting, the act of dragging/pulling all the interactable items was quite wondrous and clever, leading to results that made me smile at just how silly they were.

As an example, you can stretch a drawer in a certain direction to pop it open or, believe it or not, use it as a catapult. Other times, you may tug on a cute yet dusty sheep, sending dust particles flying into the air.

You'll occasionally need to do more than just grab and release an element, such as when you must stretch the item and rotate it in the indicated direction. There are even moments when you'll pull and release an object at the right time. My favourite of all, however, is the fact that stretching characters' faces also slaps them into moving where you want them to go, which also comes with hilarious remarks of confusion from them; though, hearing the same dialogue over and over again gets stale as you trial-and-error your way to a solution.

It's really quite cool how Crushed In Time's click-and-stretch gameplay seems like such a simple change from traditional point-and-click titles, yet it's used in such a way that makes your interactions feel varied and quite lively. However, while I love how you engage with the world, I didn't exactly love every single moment of puzzle-solving, even if most of them were fun (and silly).

There are points where the game demands far too precise, and seemingly random, solutions, which keep Crushed In Time from being a stellar experience for me. Some solutions are just way too out of left field to get without a hint, and unfortunately, the hint system has a tendency to be quite vague when I need it most. Typically, with puzzlers, I'll feel like the solution makes sense when I finally get it, or I'll say "Ah, I should've seen that" if I opt for a hint, but with Crushed In Time, it seemed like my disadvantage was that I wasn't literally in the dev's head. That said, there are easy ones, but those went to the other end of the spectrum and became too easy. There wasn't too much joy in solving them, as a result. All in all, I wish Draw Me A Pixel could have found a more balanced middle ground in terms of puzzle difficulty, because it noticeably swings from either end.

Some tedium wormed its way into my playthrough, too. For instance, there's one chapter where you need to stretch and aim elements to sling them into position, but with that level's particular fixed angle, you're constantly launching them to the unintended spot. The most frustrating chapter of all, however, was a very long-winded joke about quick-time-events that turned my initial chuckle into a desire to turn the game off because of the boredom. I get it, though; we've all had that friend who keeps repeating the same punchline, right?

As for the narrative, I had fun listening to Sherlock and Watson bicker (the voice acting is truly great), and I enjoyed witnessing their warranted disbelief at all the time-hopping shenanigans, but I also felt like I was waiting for the story to really click for me. By the time I was over halfway through the playthrough, I came to accept that the tale just wasn't gripping for me in a way that I expected. The characters, in particular, felt rather one-note, and the plot is hardly there, but the wacky adventure they're thrown into does save the experience a bit.

I appreciated the journey more when I stopped expecting the plot to tighten up and just enjoyed the weird romp through all sorts of levels. The number of different areas you get transported to (sometimes intentionally, though often not) varies widely, from a floating home to an office's whiteboard. With the premise being that you're actually travelling through different points of the game's creation, things get wildly meta, which is pretty entertaining, and that brings me to one of the strongest qualities of Crushed In Time: the visual style, which feels so vibrant, distinct, and charming.

Crushed In Time constantly had me vacillating from "This is so cool and creative" to "This could be refined." It does a lot well, and the stretch mechanic is absolutely a highlight for me as a rather unique way to do a point-and-click game. There's no doubt that a lot of creativity and imagination were poured into this game, and I think they did succeed at innovating in a genre that has a long history. That said, I wish it could've balanced the difficulty across puzzles, whittled down the parts that dragged on, and fleshed out the characters more. It's fun regardless of some of its issues, though, so if you can deal with some of the strange puzzle solutions and occasional tedium, I think it's still worth playing.