Crushed in Time [REVIEW] – A Wonderfully Stretchy Mystery 

The point-and-click adventure genre has a very specific kind of magic to it, and whilst most of the classics came out back in the 90s, modern releases have ensured the old-school puzzling very much remains alive. And now, with Crushed in Time, it’s clear that there are still plenty of ways in which the genre can be innovative, with the game (quite literally) stretching the boundaries of clever conundrums for the genre. 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

Whilst it clearly has some loving nods to the developer’s previous release, There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension, you don’t need to have played it to enjoy Crushed in Time. This is very much a standalone story, starring a highly comedic interpretation of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Yeah, you’ll want to forget the serious Arthur Conan Doyle mysteries… this version of Holmes is an absolute buffoon who bumbles through everything, while Watson acts as his highly anxious sidekick. Not quite the dynamic duo you’d expect, but somehow, they manage to piece the mystery together – with a little help from the player, of course. It’s genuinely funny too, which always helps in a point-and-click adventure. 

What makes Crushed in Time’s storytelling feel so special is its commitment to being brilliantly meta. The whole thing kicks off in a modern development studio, with launch day bringing an abundance of panic as the development team watch their title get completely review-bombed because a major NPC has vanished. Down in the game world itself, Holmes and Watson are completely oblivious to the fact that they live inside a video game, but a gravity-defying letter from a mystery woman named Emma floats into their room, kicking off a wild adventure where only they can save the game (and the day). 

The coolest hook of Crushed in Time comes with how you switch between different development builds of the game. One chapter might have you exploring gorgeous modern environments, a console command might throw you back into a retro 8-bit world that feels straight out of the 90s, whilst you’ll even visit an early prototype build where placeholder images inhabit the world. It’s an endlessly creative concept that ensures you never get bored of your surroundings, and it really helps make Crushed in Time feel unique. 

“Crushed in Time is a fantastic, highly original adventure that’ll keep players completely hooked thanks to its uniquely creative puzzling.” 

The actual gameplay loop of the game is equally unconventional. The developer accurately calls this a ‘point and stretch’ game, which might sound peculiar on paper, but makes complete sense when you start playing. See, in Crushed in Time, you don’t just click on things to use them… the entire world is elastic, so you’ll get to grab them, pull them back, and release them like a slingshot too. It’s an incredibly satisfying and absorbingly tactile way to solve puzzles, with players flinging all sorts of items across their surroundings to progress through the adventure. They’ve even committed to the bit so hard that the main menus and the hint system require you to stretch and snap the UI buttons – it’s something you’d think would get old as you play, but it was novel from start to end… or maybe I’m just easily amused, who knows?! It makes for some brilliantly creative scenarios, merging old-school puzzling with something that’ll force even veterans of the genre to think outside of the box. 

As fun as the elastic gimmick is, it does come with a few notable drawbacks. If you are playing on a PC with a mouse, it feels natural enough, but on a controller, things get unnecessarily fiddly. You have to hold down a button to grab an object, pull back with the thumbstick, and then carefully let go of the stick while keeping the button pressed, which sounds simple enough, but in practice, can just feel imprecise. I played on the Steam Deck for a lot of my playthrough, but honestly? I just found playing on my desktop PC much easier to handle. 

Some of the puzzles can feel unnecessarily drawn out too. Often, you need to trigger an environmental object at the exact moment a character walks past, and if you miss, you have to wait for them to loop back around. Because the game bizarrely lacks an option to skip spoken text, you’ll end up listening to the same voice lines over and over whilst trying to deal with it, which leads to some repetitive trial and error that drains a bit of the fun out of the experience. Admittedly, it’s not as much of a problem on PC where you have that added element of precision with the mouse controls, but it was something I suffered through more when playing on the Steam Deck. 

Check out some screenshots down below: 

But you know what? It doesn’t hinder what is otherwise a sublime puzzling experience. I thoroughly enjoyed playing through Crushed in Time, with the ingenuity of its puzzle design and its meta storytelling ensuring it feels incredibly unique from start to end.

Developer: Draw Me A Pixel 
Publisher: Draw Me A Pixel 
Platform(s): PC (Reviewed) 
Website: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3858650/Crushed_In_Time/