Crushed in Time

Looking at all of the evidence, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Crushed In Time is one of the best point-and-click adventure games, ever.

Crushed In Time is a fantastic example of how creativity can turn a simple idea into a great visual novel. Its mechanics—based on stretching and manipulating the world—seem limited at first, but they eventually reveal themselves to be a surprisingly versatile toolkit capable of sustaining dozens of hours of puzzles, humor, and experimentation. The overarching narrative is masterfully executed, the characters are charming, and the game’s ability to introduce new ideas is admirable.

Crushed in Time subverts traditional adventure formulas, delivering a fresh tactile experience through ingenious level design and witty meta-humor. While it suffers from occasional frustration and late-game control fatigue, the game shines with its genre-defying concepts and high level of polish.

While the overall game isn’t the longest in the world — a full playthrough only takes a couple of hours — the surprisingly emotional ending will leave you wanting more. While gamers who find point-and-click games may balk at some of the more traditional aspects of the underlying mechanics, there’s enough fresh blood in the game to keep players engaged. Constantly inventive and consistently hilarious, Crushed in Time may rely heavily on the core gameplay mechanics of the familiar point-and-click genre, but it does enough with the classical mechanics to stand out even from the rest of the games made by Draw Me A Pixel.

Crushed in Time is a fantastic concept for a classic adventure game, and modernises the genre wonderfully for the modern era.

Crushed In Time is one of those games that just 'clicks', even if it has some minor but annoying flaws. Thanks to the immeasurable amount of creativity at Draw Me A Pixel, Crushed In Time overcomes the repetitiveness that comes with relying on a single gameplay mechanic of picking at stuff to make it move, bounce or fling. Fair warning though: certain scenes might turn you rabbid #IYKWIM.

If you like adventure games with a large helping of puzzles and fourth-wall-breaking humour, Crushed In Time delivers in spades. The oddly limited control scheme unfortunately frustrates more than it aids. However, if you can look past that, Crushed In Time has a good amount to recommend for point-and-click adventure game fans.