When Cut the Rope was released way back in 2010, it was a phenomenal success. Everybody fell in love with the sweet antics of candy loving Om Nom and the complex physics puzzles kept players happily engaged for hours on end. Three years down the line, one of Android’s most loved game characters returns to take us back to a time when cutting strings with candies and feeding hapless little monsters offered unlimited fun. In this sequel, Om Nom isn’t alone. He’s got company and he’s ready to entice us with double the candy and double the fun. Let’s step back in time and see if Om Nom still manages to capture our hearts and minds as he did back then.
Same Game, Different Time Zone, Still Good Fun
Cut the Rope: Time Travel feels very familiar to previous editions Cut the Rope and Cut the Rope: Experiments. For readers not familiar with the game, you need to feed Om Nom, a cute green candy-loving monster candies that are strung on ropes set up at peculiar angles. In Time Travel you simply have another mouth to feed. Since the story revolves around time travel, the assumption is that Om Nom gets drawn into a time machine that takes him to meet his ancestors in the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, on a Pirates’ ship, across ancient Egypt and Greece, and through the Stone Ages. So in each of the levels you get to feed one candy to Om Nom and one to the ancestor from that specific time period.
The candies are, as in previous games placed at precarious angles and can be undone using a variety of mechanisms. For instance, Freeze buttons stop candies from crashing into spikes, swinging blades help slash though chains and anything that crosses its path (including candies), bouncing platforms help propel objects, bubbles lift up candies up into the air, and bombs help blow up and bring candies closer to the targets. There are also air fillers that blow air over ropes and chains to build momentum and stretchable ropes to sling candies into the monsters mouths. If you like to make it a little more easy for you, you can earn or buy special superpowers called Telekinesis that will help you control the candies and unlock a secret 4th star.
The difficulties or complexities are gradually introduced into the game keeping it engaging and lively. While you can get through most games relatively quickly, there are times when you’re left puzzling your head for a workaround or solution. The ropes and chains are so cleverly intertwined you need to stop for a moment and imagine how its all going to play out before you execute your moves. Although you are only repeatedly cutting ropes in each of the levels, at no point of time do you feel that you’re in repeat mode. The added difficulty of picking up all three stars adds to the game’s never ending appeal. Overall, seasoned players will enjoy the tough challenges while newbies will probably need to spend a little more time at certain levels before they get into the swing of things.
Unrealistic And Disappointing Journey
The tragedy about the Time Travel edition is that developers ZeptoLab haven’t really made an effort to improvise the game. If it ain’t broke, why fix it right? Sure, the backgrounds change just a little, and the ancestor gets decked in a costume from that era, but the fact remains that you don’t really get into the spirit of things any time during gameplay. Nor is there a whiff of a storyline surrounding the journey. You may just as well have a black, blue, or orange background to play and it wouldn’t have mattered. Another disappointment is that the mechanisms used in each time period don’t really relate to that time period. Nor does the music reflect the tunes of the past. These are definitely areas ZeptoLab could have worked upon. Unfortunately, they have simply re-spun an old familiar and successful model and showed a complete lack of depth and creativity that could have taken this game to a whole new level.
That said, Time Travel is still a marvelously designed game. The graphical elements and art work are visually appealing and the cute adorable animations uplifting and wonderful. The clever gameplay, smart mechanics, variety of content, and the right mix of difficulty levels offers enough entertainment and fun not just for the newbies, but also for old veterans of the game too. The music and sounds do justice to the game and complement it well enough, but as I said before, just stops short of being marvelous.
The Verdict
Despite offering nothing new in terms of innovative content, Cut the Rope: Time Travel manages to charm players once again. It offers the right mix of challenges that keeps you coming back for more and although you’ve probably been feeding candies to Om Nom since 2010, you still get a quiet satisfaction when you accomplish that task again and again. If you’ve never played Cut the Rope before, you will enjoy all the antics, animations and challenges the game offers. If you’ve already played the game before, you’ll be disappointed there isn’t more, but not before you’ve trumped all 80 levels of sweet indulgence. Cut the rope Time Travel is available free ( ad- supported) or you can pay $0.99 for the ad free HD version.
