What were you doing in the latter years of grade school? Perfecting your cursive? Learning about the Boston Tea Party? Throwing acorns at girls on the playground because you were scared you liked them and didn’t know how to express your feelings or emotions so you just became violent in the most pathetic way possible? Thinking about soccer practice? See, all perfectly healthy and relatable stuff.
Bodie Lee was miles ahead of us all. He was busy dreaming up the universe that Timespinner would eventually be based in. Here’s what game publisher Chucklefish had to say about young Lee’s development history:
Bodie started crafting the game world of Timespinner, making fabric figures of each character and cataloguing their adventures and storyline in notebooks. It wasn’t until high school when Bodie could start turning this fantasy world into a reality, making several prototypes of the same game world using RPGMaker2000 and later turning it into a full game prototype for a programming class in college in 2008.
Lee went on to get first place in a development competition with his early version of Timespinner, and decided to develop it into a larger game. While working at Microsoft Game Studios and then Bungie, Lee continued to work on Timespinner in his free time. At the beginning of 2014, Lee left his full-time job and decided to live off his life savings to finish Timespinner. He launched a Kickstarter campaign that was successfully funded, bringing in over $176,000, far surpassing his original $50,000 goal. Since then, Lee has been working at finishing Timespinner and coming close to making a lifelong dream a reality.
That reality is arriving on September 25 when Timespinner releases for PC, PS4, PS Vita, Mac, and Linux. The game is described as an ode to ’90s action platformers. The protagonist, Lunais, is a “timekeeper” and is out for revenge after the (probably evil) empire killed her family. By using some fancy time-control ability and by befriending creatures to help her in combat, Lunais must traverse through settings varying from medieval castles to space age labs in order to find the justice she seeks.
With Jeff Bell (Tiny Barbarian) behind the game’s soundtrack and a promising-looking gameplay trailer, Timespinner is likely one game you’ll want to pay attention to in the coming weeks.
Look for Timespinner on September 25 on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux) and on PS4 and PS Vita.
[Timespinner official website]
