I can in all probability sum up Time Bandit’s entire deal by telling you I’ve a gathering with it at 2 pm tomorrow. That is not a joke, or a wry, sideways look at some in any other case very regular and boilerplate recreation mechanic. I actually have to satisfy somebody on this recreation at 2 o’clock on the dot on the third of August, 2023. Look, right here it’s in my calendar:
By that point, a tree I planted could have completed rising, a bridge I am constructing could have completed development, and a few containers I am making an attempt to maneuver round at work could have completed shifting themselves one house forwards or backwards. It’ll be a giant day. Till then, although, all there may be to do is wait.
That is Time Bandit, a intentionally laborious work sim the place all of your duties take actual time. You play as… effectively, who is aware of? One other faceless and just lately enlisted cadet straight out of the reserve military of labour, put to work shuffling containers round in a cavernous warehouse within the pursuit of “time crystals”: literal ossified chunks of time that your capitalist overlords are taking from you along with all that alienated labour.
It is agonising. Even the best duties take at the very least an hour, and others take a full day. Virtually all of them chip away at your quickly dissipating reserves of power, and what you are paid barely covers the price of buying the instruments it’s essential preserve doing the work in future. It is half Cart Life, half Metallic Gear Strong, half idle recreation, and enjoying it’s actually a chore. I find it irresistible? I believe I find it irresistible
A matter of time
Time Bandit is a political satire, devoted to teasing out the darkly comedian absurdities of our—my, your—day-to-day existence beneath an more and more tumbledown type of worldwide capitalism. To capital and its human avatars—your bosses—you are only a useful resource: An agglutination of labour hours to be drained and tossed apart when spent. The streets are chilly and naked, the seaside is beneath the paving stones, and one of many first duties it provides you is to cut down the literal final tree within the close by forest to be able to construct a bridge (you may plant a brand new one, it takes 24 hours).
So it takes some time to play. Reality be instructed, I am not thus far into it but. I’d be additional, however I believe to unlock the side of the sport by which I begin embezzling time crystals from work I’ve to make that assembly I used to be speaking about earlier. I used to be initially meant to have it at 10 am immediately, however I used to be double-booked. An actual-life assembly outdated my digital one in significance. My contact—a suspicious and non-copyright-infringing scuba-equipped spy named Longtail Duck—contacted me angrily on the radio after I clocked again into the sport at round 11 this morning.
We needed to reschedule, which implies I’ve to attend one other, ah, 22 hours to see what it’s he needs from me.
Within the meantime, I’ve to are likely to my chores and handle my dwindling power, remembering to verify in as my duties full to progress them to the following stage. It is a sort of banal idle recreation, nevertheless it’s nonetheless unusually participating.
Many of the weirdos on my radio chafe beneath this or that aspect of capital too, and checking in with them each time I return to the sport (time passes whereas it is closed) seems like I am fostering a wierd sort of dispirited solidarity. None of us are revolutionaries—although presumably somebody round city is daubing the partitions with these anarchy symbols and hammer and sickles—however we’re all unfulfilled, doomed, alienated. All of us really feel helpless, at the very least proper now, however at the very least we’re all helpless collectively.
However the recreation guarantees greater than what I’ve seen thus far. As soon as I really handle to make my assembly with Longtail Duck, I hope it will not be one other 24-hour wait earlier than I unlock the stealth portion of the sport. To date, a lot of the gameplay I’ve skilled has been block-pushing: clearing the way in which (one hour at a time) to time crystals that I then return to my bosses for a pittance. I think Longtail will inform me that I may very well be stealing them as a substitute, sneaking them out between cameras and guards and promoting them for excess of I would get in my paycheque.
In different phrases: I may very well be claiming my labour, my time, and my stolen surplus worth again from my bosses. All I’ve to do is threat violent retribution and deprivation to do it. I’ll. Somebody has to show the bastards a lesson in spite of everything, and it is a lot simpler to try this in a recreation than it’s to do it in actual life.
As soon as upon a time, a employee going by the identify Elastico Gomez wrote the most effective essays I’ve ever learn: An offended and good reflection on their time working at an Amazon warehouse. “I need all the employees to spend extra time with one another, conspiring towards the corporate, breaking the net of surveillance, of ideology, and looting and smashing every part they will get their palms on,” the piece concluded. Time Bandit seems like somebody learn that essay and made a recreation out of it. I can not look forward to half two.
