Introduction

Super Time Force is a side-scrolling shooter that not only expects your untimely death, but encourages iterative play through a veritable menagerie of playable characters. Originally released for the XBox systems as Super Time Force May 2014 by Capybara Games, most notably known for Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP. In August the PC saw the updated Ultra edition and gave the PC Master Race 3 exclusive characters and the ability to STFU. There is also a PS4 version in the works and slated for a 2015 release. I'm playing the PC version for this LP.

This game has me going in completely blind. From the time I start all I know is that the game has pixel art and not much else. After some time in the game I know the following:

- There are time puns. The game is very silly and I love it for that fact.
- The game is broken up into several time zones with four stages apiece. Each zone should take about an hour to beat.
- There are 50 challenge maps that I'd like to do as well. These will typically be done in sequential blocks as characters unlock.
- Spy Kids 4D called. They want their time puns back.

The game's pretty light on plot but since there's some fun surprises I'd like to keep the discussion to just updates. Now then, let's get to it!

Videos

Playlist
EP01: It's 198X And It's Time For Tutorials
EP02: It's 198X And A Metal Gear Appears
EP03: It's 3072 And Cat Still Not Haz Cheeseburgers
EP04: It's 3072 And You Should Check Out My Myspace
EP05: All Hands On Helladeck Challenges 1 To 15
EP06: It's 199X And Miss Cleo's In My Future
EP07: It's 199X And A Green Dog Cage Match Sounds Fun
EP08: It's 673 And Merlin's Hurling Magic
EP09: It's 673 And The Holy Grail Doubles As A Martini Glass
EP10: It's 9600 BC And The Waterslide Is Mined
EP11: It's 9600 BC And The Sewer Level Has Fiery Poops
EP12: It's 1000000 BC And Sometimes Dinosaurs Do Kickflips
EP13: It's 1000000 BC And Jetpacks Are A Thing
EP14: All Hands On Helladeck Challenges 16 To 25
EP15: All Hands On Helladeck Challenges 26 To 35
EP16: Looking For a Looker In All the Right Places
EP17: It's Doctor Infinity And Time For Puns
EP18: It's Doctor Infinity And Time To Get Badges
EP19: All Hands On Helladeck 36 To 40
EP20: All Hands On Helladeck 41 To 45
EP21: All Hands On Helladeck 46 To 50

Characters

As updates come in I'll expand on this section.

Jean Rambois
Jean Rambois is your man if you want bullets. His normal attack is spammable for a single bullet per press and his special is 3 chains of bullets flying forward and in two angled tangents. If you want a guy who plays like Serious Sam with a machine gun, Jean's got your dakka.

Aimy McKillen
Aimy is all about tricky shots. Her normal attack is a bullet that can ricochet multiple times and her special is a powerful straight shot with piercing capabilities. The ricochet shots don't see much use outside of puzzles but the special is her bread and butter.

Shieldy Blockerson
Shieldy is all about making defense an offensive weapon. His normal attack swings out his shield for a melee swipe capable of reflecting bullets. His charged move when held down allows him to move and deflect bullets in his view direction. When released, his charge creates a force field that lasts about 3 seconds and provides protection from bullets, but not missiles or grenades. He's a good guy to play when you need to retrieve a past life or you're dealing with some hard hitters that require backup to kill.

Jef Leppard
Jef's your munitions man. His normal attack is a physics based bouncing grenade that can manage some good kills when you're behind cover. His charged is a straight shot bazooka blast that works very well on bosses. Give him Shieldy's force field for protection and you're set to spam this guy on any heavy hitter you see.

Lou Don Jim
Lou is a Jedi, plain and simple. His normal attack is a lightsaber swing capable of reflecting bullets like Shieldy. His charged move allows him to throw his sword forward during which time he can only evade until the sword boomerangs back. If you want to play as a melee then Lou's one of the first characters available.

Zoey
Zoey is an interesting mix of rapid fire and big damaage. The normal attack fires bullets from her two handguns and is spammable. Her charged attack throws a large red propane tank with an explosion radius akin to Jef's charged attack. Getting the tank to explode when you want it to can be a challenge given its default timer to detonation, but enough munitions fire on the tank will preemptively detonate it. The best feature, of course, is the fact that with a bit of luck if the explosion occurs below your person it acts as a significant jump upwards. Have fun with that.

Melanie Gibson
Melanie is your shotgun toting badass with a heart of gold and one of my favorite characters. Her normal attack is a short range level shotgun blast. Her charged attack fires 6 bullets in a 45 degree arc wherever she's aiming. In a game about hitting a bunch of things at the same time her charged is fantastic.

Saxton Hale
If you're playing the PC then Saxton is likely one of the first melee characters you'll get, regardless of which zone order you choose. His normal attack is short range punch with enough power to deal with most of the general riff-raff. His charged move makes him rush forward and start rapidly punching. The charged rush also dodges bullets while Saxton is in his rush. If you want to get in the face of everything, no matter what, he's your dude.

Merlin
Merlin is what I'd call a mid-range character. His normal fires a small bit of twinkling magic in his aiming direction. His charged move summons a large ball that flies out a little shorter than the range of the normal attack. When the ball hits the end of its path or the first obstacle it finds it will stay in place for about 4-5 seconds, dealing damage to anything that hits the ball. Think of it like a offensive Shieldy orb.

Squirty Harry
Squirty is a character all his own. His normal attack is a bullet fired from a Magnum with damage in line with other bullet users. The charged move is where things get interesting. When fully charged Squirty will fart a deadly gas in the opposite direction he's facing. This means in order to continue moving from left to right and successfully use the charged move you'd need to hold down the shoulder button that allows movement but locks your aim direction. Sometimes ass first is the only way.

Dolphin Lundgren
Dolph is a hybrid between Melanie and Rambois. The normal attack is a series of sound rings shot at close range capable of phasing through obstacles. His charged is a hailstorm of bullets akin to Rambois, but unfortunately doesn't have the same three way split. Use him if you dig the hybrid style or are perhaps low on lives and want to be able to handle short and long range.

Pyro
Pyro's a pretty good medium range character. His normal attack shoots a flare gun pellet that then splits into smaller flames that go in the cardinal directions. His charged move is a streaming gout of flames capable of following a concave direction should a ceiling or floor bend accordingly. Overall he's fairly well rounded.

Zackasaurus
Zackasaurus is a interesting melee character. Since he rides a skateboard and wears sunglasses he can jump on enemies to kill them while drinking refreshing Mountain Dew and winning Gold at the next X-Games. The only other person who can jump on enemies with impunity is Shieldy, who has a shield, but no sunglasses. ESPN has not reached out to Shieldy. Zack's normal move is a radical dino-bite at close range for respectable damage. His charged move releases a stream of projectile vomit globules made from the Mountain Dew he recently had. After learning the globules each had their own physics enabled and could get into all sorts of places Pepsi quietly declined to pursue a sponsorship deal with Zackasaurus and instead considered a TV deal with Squirty Harry. Overall, Zack's a decent melee guy that really shines when you have a skateboard combo.

Stash
Life has been interesting for Stash. One day, he's out in the woods with his friends and the next thing he knows he's in the year 647! Some old guy in a blue loincloth gave him a magnificent mustache to help fight blounbots. Stash decided to keep his manly man hair trimmed with a large chainsaw he uses as a normal attack. When he sees blounbots, though, his fibrous lip-warmer bristles in anticipation of using his charged attack. When charged you levels his boomstick and fires a shotgun blast in a powerful yet small cone towards his target. Truly, he is the king to be hailed to.

Repeatski
Repeatski never had problems making friends. His charismatic nature allowed him to rally many to his cause, no matter how odd his ideas seemed to be. His one weakness, though, is being double-blind which is like normal blindness but doubly so on account of the eye-patches that restrict sight for his blind eyes. He has managed to live on with a normal attack that punches anything in his vicinity. When that doesn't work, he uses his charismatic nature and a charged attack that fires a beam of destructive rainbow friendship at anything in front of him. Unfortunately his lack of dexterity prevents him from firing vertically with reliable success.

DaVinci
DaVinci was kind of an odd duck, really. He was hanging out at his place like he does and one day his buddy Ezio shows up in a new outfit and a curious bracelet that said "Free Hugs". Since then the two have been working together to make some very interesting ideas come to fruition. Wanting to be of use, DaVinci set out with a crossbow and a smile. His normal attack fires a crossbow bolt at a medium range that arcs downward due to gravity. His special summons a flying machine that hovers in place and fires gatling arrows curiously unaffected by gravity. This flying machine can also be used as a platform to stand on, but will slowly descend on account of how awesome it thinks his new friend is.

Looker
The Looker is a odd sort of Peeping Tom. He only really seems interested in staying around places where folks finish things earlier than expected. Nobody really knows why. His attacks are a sort of set up and release function. His normal attacks do no damage, but attach a targeting reticule on anything that was hit. The charged attack fires a burst of homing missiles that will aim for the targets planted by normal attacks.

Re-Bot
Re-Bot strikes me as the kind of guy Repeastki wanted Zackasaurus to pal around with and fight crimes. He's a Blounbot Rocketeer that now wears cool dude sneakers and a baseball cap on backwards. He's very hip, you see. When Re-Bot and Zackasaurus do go out to fight crime Re-Bot uses his normal attack to fire fours bullets in quick succession. When he unleashes his charged move four rockets fire out and seek nearby targets. Additionally, while he's firing his rockets downwards the kickback allows him to stay in the air, which could be useful is some enterprising sort wanted to make use of his hover-like ability.