This Vampire Survivors-like milks the memey humor of Abraham Lincoln fighting dinosaurs, but it's the exact type of over-the-top-slapstick that makes 'bullet heaven' games great

GamesRoguelikeThis Vampire Survivors-like milks the memey humor of Abraham Lincoln fighting dinosaurs, but it’s the exact type of over-the-top-slapstick that makes ‘bullet heaven’ games greatWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Lunar Chili)

Time Survivors

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… Abraham Lincoln? Who…isa bird?

A smorgasbord of ahistorical scenarios, Time Survivors pushes a memey vein of comedy into the genre, ripping various names from history out of their own time to battle monsters and dinosaurs. It’s a kind of humor very familiar to anyone who was online in the late 2000s, when Pirates vs. Ninjas was the ruling debate and saying Chuck Norris’ name was enough to count as humor; an age where Lincoln was a vampire hunter and Pride and Prejudice had zombies. Mainstream comedy has long since moved on.

But even if you do find the idea of Vincent Van Gogh, one-person killing machine, hilarious (and to be clear, I’m not immune), the joke doesn’t last long. You can really only laugh so much at Nero of Rome spewing fire or Nikola Tesla summoning lightning, because these aren’t jokes built to last. They are static, unchanging; wallpaper comedy painted over the exterior of the game to give it a lighthearted atmosphere. And while there are genuinely clever bits, other attempts—such as Nobunaga Oda being unlockable via using a shuriken a lot (get it, because he’s Japanese?)—are groan-worthy flops, as lazy and tired as they come.

It’s lucky for everyone then, that the real comedy of Time Survivors has nothing to do with its anachronisms.

(Image credit: Lunar Chili)

Time Survivors

Periodic challenges tasking you with staying inside a circle filled with unkillable bugs zipping around create a rhythmic ebb and flow of unpredictability and improvisation.

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The result is something hilarious in the way only games can be, successes and mistakes alike creating slapstick moments you want to tell your friends about.

(Image credit: Lunar Chili)

Time Survivors

And the visual style makes it funnier. Time Survivors serves up a cacophony of clashing aesthetics, ideas of “prettiness” or “good taste” thrown out the window for blown-out pixel art, overly realistic effects, and simple, jerking CG models smashed together in unholy unison. While the idea of Mulan fighting dinosaurs stops being funny after a couple minutes, I was still laughing hours later watching those same creakily dinos hobble about while a fresh power-up grew so large on my screen it was impossible to even tell what it was supposed tobe.

These stages aren’t well balanced: the unpredictability of the enemy hordes and item pick-ups regularly create impossible situations, and unclear geometry causes more than a few deaths, but that rough imperfection is exactly what makes it all sing. Being violently flung from genre to genre, the game struggling to keep up just as much as I was, was a delight. In these moments, Time Survivors shows its full potential; a joyous digital celebration of silly chaos.

And it’s commendable that a videogame has finally posed one of history’s great questions, as simple and complex as life itself: how funny is Nikola Tesla punching a velociraptor?

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