Madelyn Himegami

I wonder if I'll get asked anything when the askbox drops for me?

I have an open question for y'all that I'm super curious about!

How do you feel about games with overarching, relevant time limits? This includes things like Majora's Mask, Unsighted, Persona, or Pikmin... anything where there is a deadline that influences your experience and how you play.

I've heard many people say over the years that they disliked or outright could not play Majora's Mask because of the moon timer, which makes me curious about the general feeling on these kinds of mechanics.

I'd love to hear what you think in the comments, and please feel free to elaborate!

• Why do you like, dislike, or not mind overarching time limits?
• How does the game structure change things? (long-term limit, short-term limit, ability to plan ahead, ability to increase or reset the timer, etc.)
• Do you have different views on active timers (Majora's Mask) vs. turn-based timers (Persona 5)?
• Are there examples of games with time limits that you really like or dislike?

Thank you for all of your thoughts!!
~ Lily

Like most game mechanics, I don't think it can be really talked about in vacuum because what the time limit does and how it interacts with the rest of the game is pretty critical.

Like, the time limit in Persona isn't a time limit (except to a limited extent in Persona 3 which was excised from the later games and even rereleases of P3). It's an action limit, you can do a certain number of things each day, which is important for driving the player's decisions about what actions to pursue and so indirectly drives the player choosing what relationships and progression to prioritize. Majora's Mask has a real time limit that primarily drives the player to think about how to address the whole Groundhog's Day situation Termina is in.

Pizza Tower has a really interesting approach where for the first half of each level (except for one particular late-game stage that works differently), there's no time limit and so it's impossible to lose (because the only way to actually lose any stage other than boss fights is for the timer to run out). It's only in the Pizza Time phase that the timer kicks in and it brings an appropriate amount of tension to the escape, and you can even outrun Pizzaface so even running out the timer doesn't actually mean you die immediately.

Time or action restrictions are a really powerful mechanic that can be used well or badly, but trying to treat them as something that can be talked about in a vacuum is as difficult as trying to talk about "how do you feel about limiting hand sizes" in card games. It depends on the game and what it's doing and why.

every time I'm reminded that call of duty is a major game franchise that publishers get into fights over my reaction is "they still make call of duty? ...weird"

random 1am doodles on Paint