sylvie

it's something that really personally, but these end up being kinda inaccessible to me and mess with my brain in ways i don't quite like.

inaccessible in terms of; i have RSI and don't control when i'm in pain. some times i just can't play games, i basically never bother with any kind of weekly pass thing in games for example. and this isn't even mentioning the ADHD.

what it comes down to is that i have to just google in a game to make sure there's not some secret time limit that will fuck me (i.e Mass Effect 2). breath of the wild/totk are kinda funny for presenting a sense of urgency but really you can just fuck around for 100-200 hours then show up and twot ganon over the head in 10 minutes.

because if there is something time-limited i can't really gauge how much time i have to do other stuff, especially if it's a game i'm not familiar with (and i'm gonna be honest, i don't have time to replay games these days, you get 1 playthrough). i think that's downstream of ADHD tho, just bc that messes with your ability to estimate how long things take.

Oh god, how can I write an essay when I haven't slept all night?
I have played Majora's Mask, I really want to play the first Pikmin specifically. I like time limits, because I like having to adapt to the game. Majora's Mask is good at this. I would be sad if game of that type were to go away. But the best exemple to me was a game with a very, very generous time limits of 400 days. In fact, to say that the timer was generous is kind of missing the point, it would be more accurate to say that the player has a lot of time to wait. The game was called The Longing, and time was passing even when the game was closed. It's... well look like I said I haven't slept, so I cant say everything that I liked about this game, but what I loved is that the passage of time made it feel more alive, and I had to plan ahead. I like planning ahead, that's why I really want to play Pikmin.
I'm not good at twitch reflex at all, so "do something in 60 seconds or die" can be really difficult to me, but timer over a long period of time? That's my jam.
EDIT: Also, turn based timer make no differance to me, that's why I like energy mechanics. Yes, I said, I like energy mechanics. I like what people find ugly and I will die sad.

Mostly it's anxiety; a fear of missing out, a fear of not having enough time. I played through part of Persona 5 Royal, and I didn't mind the time limit nearly as much as I thought, but I also played with a spoiler-free guide to make sure I wasn't gonna miss anything important, so...

I think time limits can be good, but they work best in games where "losing is fun". It works well in XCOM where there is an explicit timer, but also in games where there can be implicit time limits, like RimWorld or survival games.

Majora's Mask is unplayable to me. :( I just can't have an active timer ticking down by the second, or else it completely sucks the fun out and becomes a source of stress. (I can't even play chess with a timer). Long or short term timers make no difference.

Persona 5 is completely fine stress-wise, but that's partially because it gives sooooo much time to meet the deadlines; it actually felt like a drag having to wait for the months to end sometimes. Kind of disrupts the rhythm and delivery of the story, imho. If it only gave a week to do it though, I'd probably have mixed feelings.

I've grown into really liking set time limits in games and I think the best way to summarize is with a well done timer system can turn a game into a "did you do x thing?" game instead of a "will you do x thing?".

I like taking my time with things, but I also like refreshing experiences and this kind of system makes you think gameplay on terms of how you'd do things differently if you knew what you know now. And that rewards by itself when you pick back up, even if you don't develop your mechanical skill just having these side notes in your brain makes for a reward in replay.

This is why Majora's system appeal fades out a bit for me, for example. Even though the game knowledge reward is there, the time reset allows you to do most things one at a time and then reset, so there are very few things in the game that felt to me like actual failure states that I had to overcome with my knowledge of the game (I can only think of Anju and Kafei's quest and the Gilded Sword quest as things I had this feeling).

I also like games that have a limit of cycles which also have their time limit, like Pikmin or Harvest Moon games. A favorite thing of mine in older Harvest Moon games is that how much you plant isn't depending only on how much money you had but also if you actually have the resources to care for it within the daily time limit. Even when you minmax after being very experienced with the game you still have to keep these things in mind as it'll be meaningless to have a full field if you can't tend for it. As collecting crops took as much or even more time as watering them, in these games the act of shipping all your crops felt like a huge reward out of a big endeavor (even more when you could do it before the shipment guy arrives).

This expands in macro terms into the season system so you learn your plants and shop opening days, and in the SNES one into the 2 year dead limit. I think it's a shame that they parted with the that dead limit as I really like the different endings the game had, putting emphasis on the "did you do x thing?". The concept lives in the 3-year checkup but is not as meaningful since you can keep playing.

Had to hold back on commenting on why Tokimeki Memorial and Boku no Natsuyasumi are my favorite examples since i already do that all the time and action button did it much better.

Anyways, I like turn based timers more as it puts more emphasis into planning, cycle-based ones are a close second for that same reason, but active timers are cool too.

Favorite games: Boku no Natsuyasumi, Tokimeki Memorial, Digimon World, Harvest Moon

god I really have to stop procrastinating Unsighted

Other comments have touched on the two things that make me not like timers in games:

1. Timers that have the consequence of making me repeat boring things in order to see things I missed
2. Timers that pressure me during the learning stages of a game

Majora's Mask is mildly guilty of the first one (teleporting helps but movement is not snappy enough to make returning to where I was easy) and the second one (the first cycle is pretty generous with the time but it's still timing you while you are learning the basics) but once I got a hang of resets it was fine and I loved the game.

Persona I haven't played but I think the comments about the length making replay unviable resonate with me.

Outer Wilds is a great example of a game the kicks ass on problem 1 because you can be off planet in 7 seconds from a reset and flying is a joy in that game. I've heard some folks have issues with problem 2 for it but I think the subtlety of the indicators of the timer make it pretty ignorable.

Stardew Valley's time passage is what has kept me from getting into it specifically because of 2; I have never been able to take in all the learning of the game's systems while also being under time pressure. Harvest Moon SNES is the main farming game I've played and the time passage there is less of a problem simply by how much less there is to learn at the start. I'd probably like Stardew better if it made less things / interactions available (or at least made them less visible) in the starting month or two.

Metroid escapes and other similar timers generally avoid both of these by happening quickly and at points late in the game.

i love time limits of all forms, in real-time games and in turn-based games too. most of my favorite games either have explicit time limits or other mechanics that act as a de facto time limit (e.g. the air timer in mr. driller or the food clock in traditional roguelikes), and i think most popular games that removed their time limits in sequels (e.g. pikmin, dead rising) are worse off for having done so. my game is an arcadey game with time limits too, so i've had to think about them a lot.

that said, i'm not quite as much of a fan of time pressure when you're exploring a brand new area for the first time. my game gets around this by making you do a short no-time-pressure exploration of a level (delivering flyers) before unlocking the ability to play it for real. but i think this issue is much less important if your game has a long-term overarching time limit, because you've probably either made the time limit so lenient that it's not a big deal, or you're expecting people to do multiple playthroughs anyway.

and i'm aware that there are lots of people who get unusually distressed by the presence of any sort of time limit, way more so than any other sort of fail state such as limited health or lives. so i added a 'relaxed' difficulty option to my game that replaces all time limits with healthbars. i'd like to think i did a good job of balancing it, although unsurprisingly i personally prefer playing with time limits enabled. i'm almost never a fan of compromising my design vision like this and i go out of my way to not do it in any of my games, but i made this one exception just because there are so many time limit haters out there.

Outer Wilds is the only game with a time limit like that that I've been able to stomach (and love). I think it comes down to a few things.

• The time limit is short (<30min)
• It's quick to get back into the exploration
• There are no unlocks or items. Everything found while exploring is player knowledge

I'm gonna echo what a lot of other people have said here, but Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game by a very wide margin and the time limit mechanic is a core part of why, but I think why Majora's Mask works for me is less about the fact that there is a time limit, and more about what the game does with it, with its repeating three-day cycle. One of the most satisfying things about the game to me is doing things over and over, and learning new things, and learning how to do them faster and more efficiently, and seeing how everything connects from different perspectives through repeated cycles. It's less about the fact that it's timed and more about the way the timer incentivizes iteration and optimization.

I'm a very anxious person, and sometimes have a hard time keeping up with stuff, and I can totally see why people find timed things stressful and not fun. "I wanted to play at my own pace and the game wouldn't let me" is a completely reasonable complaint. Majora's Mask in particular kind of tries to solve this problem by:

• giving you a song that makes time pass 3x slower (unfortunately a hidden and easily missable mechanic that many who found the game too stressful are probably not aware of)
• giving you the ability to start the cycle over at any time, for free, with almost zero penalty

Pikmin's timers I appreciate for a lot of the same reasons. Some of the most fun I've ever had with those games was in seeing how I could optimize a run and complete the game in as few days as possible. Interestingly, I think Pikmin 2 and 3 are better for playing this way, even though they don't give you a hard deadline the way the first game does. Mostly, 2 and 3 just have more things going on, and the addition of more captains gives you more opportunity to multitask and really shave down the time of your run with practice and good planning. The games sort of incentivize (or don't incentivize) you to do this to varying degrees (Pikmin 1 explicitly encourages speed and optimization with its hard deadline, Pikmin 2 throws all the pressure out the window and lets you go at your own pace, and Pikmin 3 has its own weird "deadline" in the form of your characters starving if you don't collect enough juice), and I think 2 and 3 are maybe a good compromise by allowing and sort of encouraging you to play the game this way but not necessarily making you?

Also, the games are all pretty short, and Pikmin 2 and 3 (and I think pikmin 1??) also allow you to roll back to previous days whenever without putting it on the player to make a bunch of duplicate saves, which I think helps a lot. If the stakes are too high (like if the game is super long and failing something means you have to do a lot of stuff over again) it discourages experimentation, and I think experimentation is a key part of what makes this formula work

I will say that I don't always find timers in games fun and interesting -- in some, they actually are just stressful or tedious or pointless. Frogger on the PS1, for example, has a timer in it (probably just because the original arcade game did), and I would say it actively works against what makes the game fun and would be better off without it. Unlike a traditional platformer, where it's a straight path and you want to get to the end, in Frogger the levels are nonlinear, and your objective is to explore them and find where 5 baby frogs are hidden. The timer is very short, and some of the levels are pretty large and mazelike, and it can often feel like the game is punishing you for exploring and trying to figure out where you're even supposed to go. Add to this the fact that you have very limited lives, and lose everything you've picked up in the level if you get a game over, and it's a recipe for frustration. An otherwise great game is held back by mechanics that are only really there because its predecessors have them. Actually, a lot of time limits in old platformers are mostly pointless now that I'm thinking about it. Just a holdover from the arcade days most of the time.

That said, I don't think a game necessarily has to do something with its timer for the timer to be good. A timer can add pressure and sometimes pressure can be fun. But everybody's going to have a different tolerance level for that sort of thing so it's probably best to give the player as much control over it as you can. It's one of those "the reasons people dislike this are exactly the same reasons other people do like it" things.

To summarize: I really like the time limits in Majora's Mask and Pikmin, dislike it in Frogger PSX specifically, and don't really care or think about it in most other games and probably wouldn't mind if it wasn't there in most cases. I think it's better suited to shorter games with high replayability (or games that are at least broken up into small chunks like MM and Pikmin) than large, long, 200-hr RPGs, and I think the player should probably have the option to slow down, speed up, or maybe even completely disable the timers if possible. The timer should be there for a reason, and should ideally be at least a little customizable imo.

(Sorry for the long reply I just love pikmin and Majora's mask so I've thought about this a lot lol)

I don’t mind it when the time limits are short (Minit, time-loop games like Ghost Trick, Outer Wilds, or The Sexy Brutale, etc), but longer time limits like in Unsighted stress me out (I ended up playing that game with the timers turned off). Part of it is the amount of progress I stand to lose (and consequently, how free I feel to experiment and explore), but also with longer time limits I feel like I don’t really have as much of a sense of whether I’m progressing fast enough to keep up.

I like timers as a game design element personally, but I wanted to comment because a friend of mine who made a pretty large game's personal advice was to not include it. According to them, no element of their game caused a bigger backlash and made people more upset than having a full-game time limit - even if it wasn't really that strong and people could go back and treat it more like a level timer. I think it's a psychological thing - a long-term timer makes people paranoid, that they're always wasting time that they'll never get back, and it's especially bothersome to them if a game is difficult or something like that.

So I'd say that personally, I don't mind a timer and I think they're a very interesting element of a design tool kit to use when necessary, but my friend who actually made a timer game says that they'll probably make your game somewhat less popular. Anyway I just wanted to chime in since they brought it up

It depends entirely on how much time you're given. I deal enough with deadlines in my job that I don't like dealing with a time crunch in a game that I'm investing time in. Stardew Valley felt unplayable for me, one of which being the passage of time.

If it's a time loop situation, that's fine.

Usually not a fan of active timers at all. I hate doing things at anything other than my own pace. Majora's Mask is fine with a guide and/or the song to slow time. Played it for the first time this year and it seemed a lot more stressful than it actually was during play. This seems like the biggest issue, the feeling that you're under pressure, even if you have plenty of time. Like any wrong move could cost you the whole thing. Ghost Trick works for me though (one of my faves), while Outer Wilds blew all its goodwill with me at the end. I hate repition, so if I "lose" because I looked away from the game for a minute and have to redo a section, I'll just put it down instead.

Games where I'm not actively timed but only have limited moves/actions/etc are usually fine or even good (persona, I was a teenage exocolonist). Persona and similar games make you choose what to prioritize without making you feel like you're missing out or just seconds away from losing progress.

I'm also a big baby who hates most failure states. I don't feel thrill or excitement when I complete something hard in games. I'm probably largely anhedonic, because like killing a boss in dark souls makes me feel basically nothing, but losing feels like torture. So timers aren't like "hell yeah, made it just time, that was tense!" for me, more like "okay, task done, wish I wasn't rushed."

I also hate ATB systems; make it turn based or real time. Let me take my time and think, or don't.

SO all that to say, if you're someone who gets a rush from hard earned success, you'll probably like timers. If you get excitement from other elements of play, you probably won't like timers?

out of these, I like the time loop time limit games the best (Majora's Mask, Outer Wilds) cause there aren't really any consequences to doing poorly (other than your own time), and you can really focus on the fun of routing and efficiency. Overarching time limit games like Pikmin and Dead Rising are a little rougher to play the first time around, but I feel are great once you figure out the cadence - both playing efficiently and inefficiently changes what you're able to do. I find the long term turn-based times (Persona, Tokimeki Memorial, Citizen Sleeper) the most excruciating because I have the time to agonize over every decision trying to play optimally. I usually have to come up with a secondary decision-making process (like role playing a certain way) to make them fun for me

I should hate time limits. On paper, I do. I'd much rather go at my own pace. But in practice? Some of my favorite games have some time critical element to them.

I'll be scarce of detail to avoid spoilers. Two examples not yet mentioned are in Fear and Hunger 1 and 2.

In Fear and Hunger 1, there is a plot even that happens 30 real world minutes in. It is not a game over, it is not run ending, the timer doesn't even stop when you're paused, AND the game doesn't tell you about this timer. Naturally, you won't even notice on your first play because it will take you too long to get there. But it is a baffling revelation when you do figure it out. And then after you have some knowledge of the game, enough to have a real shot at making it under 30 minutes, the entire dynamic of changes. It is a difficult game and now it is harder because you're acting in haste. I adore this set up because it's like a trick. You don't have the looming time limit pushing you away from getting comfortable, you can get hooked on intrigue and then baited to go deeper.

On the other side, Fear and Hunger 2 handles it completely differently. Plot time does not advance in real time, only when you rest. Obviously this means that events have a one way nature to them as time moves on, but critically: at the end of the third night the game ends AND resting is your only reliable way to save. So not only is there a schedule of events to leverage and explore, but it's tempered with the cost of saving and makes all the risk / reward calculus fascinating. The cherry on top is that some events will pass time without your permission and without saving. "Oops I lost this battle, it wasn't a game over but now it's tomorrow. The character I wanted to talk to is probably dead."

The clock of 2 is less spicy than in 1, but it makes exploring the space complex. I've played both of them for more than 50 hours so they must be doing something compelling.

Also token warning if you go to look things up: both of those games contain a lot of objectionable content. Like nudity and violence and more

i am definitely one of those people for whom overarching time limits and/or time loops tend to make games stressful enough that they become basically unplayable, even when the rational part of my brain knows that there's actually plenty of time

in persona 4 i mostly just worried about whether or not i was always making the best possible use of my time, because the thought of "screwing up" my playthrough of an 80+ hour rpg overshadowed everything else. even knowing that there was more than enough time, and even with the help of various guides, i ended up dropping the game maybe 10 hours in

time loop games like majora's mask and outer wilds don't have that fear that i'm going to "ruin" a playthrough since you get as many loops as you want, but they lead to a different form of stress due to the way you can miss certain events and have to just start the loop over and wait for them to happen again. or, you just get interrupted by the time loop in the middle of doing something else. rationally, i know that majora is very generous with its tools to mitigate the time loop and it isn't hard to work around it, but that irrational stress remains. similarly, the passage of time in stardew valley (both the loop of seasonal events and the time limit of each day) turned what's generally considered a "chill" game into a constant frantic scramble for me. i've never made it past summer

in outer wilds in particular i felt like any time i was starting to make a little progress on a planet i'd hit the end of the cycle and have to start over. this is possibly an adhd thing, but those resets got me into a loop of thinking "well, i guess that was a dead end for now" and trying to investigate some other random thing, only to die or hit another reset before making any progress. despite wanting to like the game i have yet to make it more than two hours in

that being said, i do think these games are fascinating from afar, and i wouldn't want to see these time limit-driven experiences taken away from other people. i'm just not sure they're for me. again, adhd might be a factor here. it's harder to take my time and investigate random distractions on a whim when the clock's ticking

(on the other hand, i really enjoyed minit, probably because the time limit is SO short that it keeps your expectations for how much you can do in one loop in check, and if you fail to do what you were trying to do in a loop then you've literally only wasted one minute)

Games with actual time limits stress me out because I really like durdling and exploring at my own pace, but from my perspective, Majora's Mask doesn't really have a time limit. Each cycle does, sure, but you can play the Song of Time as many times as you need to, or want to. If you want to spend an entire cycle pretending to live on the ranch, there's no penalty for that, you're not wasting time you can't get back.

Re Unsighted: I ended up dropping it partly because of the timers. I think it was an issue of expectations. I went into the game mostly blind, and the game opened with what, to me anyways, felt like very clear homages to Hyper Light Drifter's opening. I absolutely loved Hyper Light, but I played that game kind of meditatively; I liked exploring it and discovering secrets at my own pace. But then the consequences of Unsighted's timer mechanic started hitting me and I started realising how different of a game it is, and the antagonism between exploration/discovery VS progression and not having the timers run out felt too aggressive.

But, I actually think the timer mechanic is entirely justified, and that Unsighted is full of other super cool elements! (it also does have an option to play without the timer!). Honestly Unsighted might be the coolest game I've dropped, and I absolutely recommend it if you know what you're in for or also as a fun game to speedrun or watch speedruns of if that's what you're into. To go back to the timers: i think they're cool! they make sense, but you feel them viscerally if you miss them, which is good! I just wasn't in the mindset for that when I played the game, so I still think i might come back to it someday lol.

On the other hand, I've also played Persona 5 and its time limits didn't really bother me that much there, i also went in mostly blind, but the time mechanics felt more... mundane? than Unsighted, and in that way it felt less aggressive. Like, sure, it really is a bummer if I don't get to max out all the social links with everyone, and if I miss out on a few fun cutscenes, but the game still wants you to and lets you spend time with those characters in its world, so it feels a lot like just naturally spending more time with some friends and less with others. Part of it bothering me less is prolly that it's turn based too, so it's a lot less frantic, but also, that it's a whole ass RPG, so I didn't hate that it had some mechanics that would nudge me to move forwards and not spend a million hours playing it.

And I want to mention Mega Man X2! which has kiiind of progression-based timers. In MMX2, you can defeat 3 bosses to collect different pieces of Zero's body. They each start appearing in hidden rooms in the regular stages after you've defeated a certain number of normal bosses, but they all go away when you've only got 2 of those normal bosses left to go. IIrc, while the game tells you when they spawn and in which stages, it doesn't tell you from the outset when they'll go away thou, but what's interesting is that the consequence of missing their fights is a reward in its own way.

If you missed collecting all of Zero's body, then the antagonists reconstruct him and force him to fight you just before the final boss. Then you beat him up until he goes back to being his old self. If you fought the hidden bosses and recovered Zero's body instead, a cutscene plays out where the antagonists present a fake Zero to you, and just as you're about to start fighting it the real one shows up and instantly explodes it.

So the reward for completing the time-limited challenges is playing what feels more like the best-ending and that you get to see Zero be an absolute badass. And the "punishment" for missing the limited time events, is that you actually get a really cool "protagonist VS mentor-ish best friend gone rogue" fight, where Zero still stays alive at the end! And the thing is, specially when I was a kid, I do want to properly save Zero... but I also want to experience the cool Zero fight.

I guess what I'm saying here is that, while it might be too forgiving by having essentially no narrative consequence for fighting Zero because he's just fine in the end anyways, I like MMX2 deal because it gives you something to look forward to even if you missed the timed events, so there's something rewarding about it no matter what, in one case narratively, in the other gameplay-wise. And it's not too frustrating to realise there was a different path available to you, because MMX2 is a very short game that is easy to replay from any point, from any state via the game's own passwords system. So it doesn't matter which path you take, there's incentive and easy ways to try the other one (arguably, in this specific case, it's more fun to miss the timed events on replays lol).

Not to go even longer here :'), but I also really love Risk of Rain and the way it very directly ties difficulty with time spent playing, while also presenting potentially high rewards for spending time exploring and defeating enemies. The permanent question of "do you want to progress, or get cool items while making the game harder" is part of why I think it's a really fun multiplayer game too... huh, thinking about it this game also kinda rewards you either way whether you let the timer run or race against it.

I had a violent reaction as a child playing digimon world on ps1—the "toilet meter" just had me shaking all over as I was playing the game (the digimon would evolve into a "bad" form if you didn't make sure to let it go to the toilet before the toilet meter went to max, and I didn't want a "bad" digimon so I was really scared to explore too far into unknown areas). I avoided any games with time limits like that for a long time.

I came to really love pikmin 3 later though, and I don't think overarching time limits bother me anymore. in any case, the time limit in pikmin 3 that isn't very restrictive and you can rewind too. the coop missions in pikmin 3 have nice short time limits that demand efficient teamwork to clear (or get a good score)—I love those mission so much

Time limits increases the pressure for me to "meta-game" to try and do what's optimal instead of what might be fun or interesting. Especially in things like Persona where you can miss out on equipment or content. Majora's Mask is better for me, since I can reset the time and not miss out on anything permanently.

Read none of the comments there's a lot of text there

Majora's Mask I somehow was able to get over the anxiety of playing while growing up, though I was a lot more cautious with my time limits than I am now.

Pikmin was just too hard and I couldn't wrap my head around it until I was older. There's some kinda wall of "understanding that the video game is just a program" that I unlocked at some point that made the time limits less of a factor. And just not being 12 or whatever.

I think an interesting aspect here is that you've put Majora's Mask here when its time limit is reset-able. Like yeah sure you only have X amount of time before you're forced to reset the timer or face the game over screen, but the time limit isn't a Hard Time Limit, so it feels confusing to me personally that people stress out over it? (This might be more because I have terminal game designer brain though so my way of engaging with games is very different from most other people...)

I havent played much in the way of games with overarching game ending time limits but maybe I should think about the design of such because it's an interesting angle of pressuring the player, especially in like, a game without (a focus on) combat.

So like, the "Turn-Based Timers" approach with like, Persona 5, or even in like, turn-based rpgs where a boss will fucking annihilate you within X turns, just means that you need to REALLY take your time making each choice you make. This style tends to lean more into the like, appealing to people who just really like scheduling and spreadsheets and that's cool! I think that's neat. (Editor's Note: actual dating sims operate like this i believe? I havent really played any but that's my understanding of the gameplay, managing your time and resources to hold hands better.)

Ultimately my thoughts are largely just "Ok so what purpose does the time limit serve in the context of this game?" The answer is diverse BECAUSE so many games apply it differently! A question of inevitability is given and the player is asked to figure out what to do with their time.

Rain world.
2 (+ some more) time strickter things.
First each cycle of the game has a timer when rain comes. Notably this rain fall hard enough to pound you & most things to their death. You are given a timer & the range of time per cycle varies on what slugcat campaign your playing. It's a fun 2d metroidvania / souls1 ish like map survival game where you play as a slugcat.
The other big thing is the base games hard mode "hunter" which limits you to 19 cycles (+5 given later) to complete the entire game in a hader turned up world with new challenges & a stronger really enjoyable slugcat. Notably this cat is a push ore towards directly engaging with the games combat due to it being easier to feed your currently played cat which doesn't benefit as much from food you normally don't stab to death.
It's a great time for the game & a fun step up that encourages some fun routing challenge while still being open to go about & do things than just progression (stress varies also lots due to the games benefit for saving / resting before rain vs penalty (& minor benefit) of death that has to be kept up in different parts of its progression.

Typed why very drowsy. Highly recommend rain world. Its my favorite game (that Or Celeste.) & It also got an amazing dlc with lot of mod devs joining the dev team. 5 New slugcat campaigns, mod support, campaign local coop, expedition / objective given & doo mode with preset & randomly set challenges, safari where you can play / mess with any creatures to game has controlling them in regions you go the "safari" collect for. (Also remix which is part of base game with bunch of qol, assists, & additional features to add to the experience.) Update Coming
to consoles soon.

I think most of what I'd say has been said, but yes, I love the Majora/Outer Wilds stuff but I find the Pikmin style a bit stressful in the same way that I kind of don't get on with things like the (excellent) new "[Bodily Fluid] of the [Landmass]" Zelda games — in those games I'm given loads of resources (elixirs, herbs, weapons, mushrooms, money, etc) and I have no idea what they might be useful for or how valuable or scarce they are, and then I'm asked to manage them in such a way that 100 hours from now Future Me will have everything they need to complete a challenge of unknown difficultly. I can't do that! Putting in a time limit makes time into one of these resources, and moreover one I can't simply hoard. Pikmin mitigates this quite well by telling you up front how many objectives the game has altogether so you have a good idea how much time you should be spending on each level, but this is absolutely a pain point that anyone using a time limit in their games needs to think about.

I'd say it depends a lot on the game. I don't mind a time limit when it feels like it's adding an appropriate challenge to the game and there's still room to do things in different ways, but I hate time limits that I feel like are limiting me to a single optimal path and preventing me from experiencing parts of the game.

Wanna talk a little bit about my favorite example of a timer game, which is a little different mechanically but gets at some of the same stuff: Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. In the game your main character Ryu has a dragon inside him that gives him super strength and will eventually kill him. The D-gauge as it's called starts at 0% and it goes up a certain amount whenever he uses dragon moves, and also goes up more slowly just by walking (so it's not really a timer, but close enough) and once it hits 100%, it's game over. The game then puts you in situations where you have virtually no choice but to use the dragon powers, and also have no way on an initial playthrough to judge how much must be saved for later. Nominally an RPG, the game actually borrows heavily from horror games and adds elements of its own all to stress you, the player, out, make you feel trapped, hopeless. The setting is likewise claustrophobic - society lives underground, forbidden from seeing the sky, pollution from stale air promises to slowly wipe out society. You'll climb from the lowest point up to the surface, if you can. The principal accomplishment of this game is to make it to the point any other game would start at (if this sounds like the first episode of Gurren Lagaan, take a look at Ryu's visual design compared to Simon's). You can't copy your save file, and you can only save by using a limited number of save tokens. The UI also plays a role in that: the D-gauge percentage is ever-present in battle and field screens. Everything in the game conspires to make you feel as if you are at an unrecoverable disadvantage. There's even a button in the menu you can press to intentionally give up. Giving up, though, isn't the end. You can start again in one of two NG+ modes - one keeps your current plot progress but starts you with extremely limited resources, leading right back to over-reliance on dragon powers, the other starts you at the beginning with firmer footing. Starting over also has the benefit of unlocking more plot and character screens. It's an intended part of the game's cycle. I can think of very few games with an ending more impactful, that really capture a feeling of hope puncturing overwhelming despair, than this one.

Being the fifth entry in a beloved and generally more colorful (if not more cheerful) franchise, was not received particularly well when it came out. But it is a brilliant, brilliant game, and I think you can find its DNA in the likes of Dark Souls - the journey from sunlight through the depths to blighttown and then back gives me very similar vibes, the quiet call for perseverance in the face of overwhelming adversity, and the idea that a game needs to be replayed for a player to be able to contextualize the stuff that happened the first time around. Good stuff.

I appreciated how the timer enabled Majora's Mask to create a more "realistic" world. Everyone besides the player isn't standing frozen in place or walking in circles. NPCs have actual daily routines. It's something I'd never seen before and have only seen in Stardew Valley since.
That said, DAMN is it stressful! I can think of a few tweaks off the top of my head that would have helped a lot (like being able to use the defeated boss masks to simply toggle an area to its post-boss version instead of needing to re-fight bosses over and over if you missed something).
Timers can be a great tool for doing things you couldn't otherwise do, but have some mercy, video games are supposed to be fun.

When it comes to things like active times, it really depends on what the goal I have to acheive is. Like, does the game reset at the end of the timer? (Majora's Mask or Outer Wilds) If yeah, then I don't mind it, so long as between each run, I get to keep something of signifigance, whether that be knowledge, or items, or even just something that makes the stuff leading up to that next run better/more likely to succeed.

As for turn-based timers, again, it really depends on whether or not I'm capable of completing all my goals in the recommended time. For example, I am NEVER going to be able to beat a Persona game the way I want on first attempt, simply because trying to juggle social links, gathering and leveling persona, dungeon crawling, gathering money and equipment, and improving my personal stats in one run. So usually I just dedicate the first run to gathering as many persona as possible and improving my stats, and then use my second run to actually form all the social links and "win" the game.

I guess when it comes down to it, I like games that make it so the time limit forces me to actually limit my attempts to one specific goal so I'm not left flailing around and end up not completing anything I want (Outer Wilds), but I don't like it when they sneak up on me and I lose access to parts of the game/get bad results because I either didn't know there was a time limit or I'd have to rush like crazy to get the result I want.

When the time limit doesn't make me feel anxious every time I play it, I love them. When they already impose a frustrating limitation on an already very long game, I'm not a fan.
So I guess for me, short term time limts that give me the ability to plan ahead by either letting me retry the same thing over and over, or by virtue of letting me pause it and think it over, are great. Long term ones can be fun, but only when there isn't so much for me to do that I can't possibly get it all done in one attempt. But I genuinely hate ones that leave me starting all over from scratch.

The only example I have of the last one is a pair of games called Wasted (or Wasted: A postapoclyptic pub crawler) and Moonlighter. See, in both games, the longer you play, or if you obtain some rare item, the higher the chance that a nigh unstoppable enemy will appear and start hunting you throughout the level. In the case of Moonlighter, avoiding it isn't HARD, but it's definitely a "welp, this level is no longer searchable" moment, especially since the game's backpack organization leads to a lot of moments where you really, really have to stop and think about what you want and when you wanna keep it. A for Waster, the giant, power armor wearing, minigun toting guy hanging out in these levels ripped straight out of Fallout is a gigantic bullet sponge and he pumps out enough hurt to kill you in just a few seconds if you aren't careful, Even if you defeat him, his weapon and armor aren't nearly good enough to make up for the supplies you just lost fighting him, especially since the ammo is pretty dang hard to source. So basically, it's a time limit that forces the player to rush through levels designed to hurt you or be explored carefully, and don't actually reward you for success outside of not punishing you.

While Moonlighter's other aspects can kind of help me ignore this element, Wasted was absolutely kneecapped by this decision, for me at least.

It stressed me the heck out in MM as a child at first, but I eventually grew to love it. I think of Outer Wilds the same way. The world just feels so much more alive when the NPCs have their own agendas that they pursue in real time, instead of just standing in-place waiting for you to interact with them.

The way Persona 5 did it is great to me, picking an activity makes time pass and you can't do it all. That's life!! The way Dead Rising did it is also pretty great because the world (mall) feels alive when stuff just happens even if you are bumbling around somewhere else. The problem with Dead Rising is the awful bosses, not the counter.

Guess I haven't played too many games with time limits but I think it's a good idea to put some motivation on the player to get them moving forward. Doing and seeing everything in a game is never worth doing and making it impossible is a good idea.

(hi!)

I'll be honest, there's a variety of things that short-circuit my brain and make me unable to properly take in an experience

that said, I don't think time limits inherently do that. I think with Majora's Mask, my attempt to play it was a combination of

• the time limit;
• the (intentional and honestly quite amazing) unsettling reshuffling of OoT;
• and regular gameplay confusion

making me too overwhelmed, and I just didn't have the energy to stick with it through that. I think if I gave it another shot with more mental energy, I'd get used to it enough that I probably wouldn't mind the time limit anymore, since it's not a finite-time game. You can reset it.

Other timers:

• stuff where you like press a button and a timed door opens? Barely registers as an obstacle
• quest time limit in Monster Hunter barely registers to me, even when they make it shorter as a high-end limitation. ONCE in my 1.5k+ hours across games have I failed a quest because the time ran out, but that was just memorable, didn't make me feel bad
• AI War, a somewhat obscure asymmetrical PvE RTS, has a timer of sorts: Your opponent gets stronger over time, and if you procrastinate too much, you will get overran. In-universe, your opponent outmatches you in every aspect, and you survive because you haven't drawn enough attention to yourself, and this attention count increases both with your actions and over time. That one hits the right spot for me.
• I'm not deep enough into Pathfinder: Kingmaker to have a definite opinion on its time limit, but I feel like it's gonna be one of those "irrelevant until panic because you're running out" scenarios.
• in competitive games (fighting games!!), time limits are an important tool in my experience that limit certain degenerate strategies (not pejorative, in the game theory sense). And they also lead to exciting situations as time ticks down! Definite fan of those.
• AI: The Somnium Files has a timer on its puzzle segments. I didn't strictly mind them--I had to redo puzzles a few times because of them, but the way you interacted with it was very centered around time management, with a couple really cool things it did. Also I streamed it for my friends and we had a grand old time meme-ing about "six minutes, Date", so it there's that I guess!!

I'm not sure I've played stuff with turn-based time limits much. Arguably Kingmaker?? It's "time passes while you travel on the overworld and rest" time, that's neither real time nor turn-based. Maybe Into The Breach. A couple fights in Slay the Spire. But none of those bugged me much, so I think they're fundamentally different from real time/"action" time constraints.

(as an aside, another mechanic that inherently messes with me: Stealth games that reward perfect stealth. I literally could not play Dishonored because I would reload a save the second I'm spotted, and that's so boring to play, but I CANNOT get myself to just roll with it. Operation not supported. Quit it two hours in, I think.)

sorry for the unstructured mess of a response, this is not even the first draft but too many words out of brain :S

boring defensive play

yes yes yes it is so hard to get strategy game players to do anything but the safest, most boring option, even when it isn't actually optimal

Outer Wilds for both peak and valley. The core game did it so well because you got to see the solar system changing in real time and see how things affected other things from start to finish. But then I found myself very frustrated with an otherwise excellent expansion because it was too much packed into that same time limit-- on many occasions I needed more time to do the thing I wanted to accomplish.

so I know a lot of people who never played Dead Rising because of the overarching time limit. There's a group of people who sit down to play videogames because it's safe - i.e. there is no time constraint like real life where you have constant deadlines. It's pretty well known that Dead Rising gives you more than enough time to finish everything, but the fact that you can't just chill and mow down zombies with a lawnmower while there's a literal timer counting down to your daughter's death does distract from the zombie killing. The system itself doesn't lend to catharsis, because there's a constant reminder to hurry hurry hurry.

The stress turns people off. People are stressed enough in life already, they don't want to pick up a game that simulates that stress.

Ahh, you hit a lot of good points here imo!! I don't have much to add except to agree with timers as a way to gently kick people in the ass for aggressive powergaming or to inspire new ways of strategizing & exploring the game systems. It's definitely a contentious mechanic, especially when it totally encompasses a game, but those are often the most interesting ones.

And thank you for that writeup by Sylvie, I hadn't seen it and it's a very cool way to think about things in its own right! I feel like I've been seeing a lot of discussion around friction & how it can create more memorable games that feel personal (Hidetaka Miyazaki's love of swamps, etc.) and it's something I think about a lot, even if what I make often errs on the safer side...

We like it when there's a baseline telling us that we're doing well. Atelier Meruru had a time-limit system for each of its tasks, and it was nice to like... complete all of the essential tasks, then have downtime to do whatever we wanted. If there wasn't that time limit, then we're not sure we'd ever engage with the downtime activities in the same way.