Crushed in Time transcends time and the fourth wall
Crushed in Time is a new point-and-click adventure with a comic-look aesthetic and a surprising twist. Studio Draw Me A Pixel has transformed the whole game into an elastic playground. In fact, it forced my brain to be a little more elastic too.
If you’re a fan of the point-and-click genre, Crushed in Time’s protagonists might look familiar to you. Following their appearance in There is No Game: Wrong Dimension, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are back to solve yet another tricky case. When a mysterious letter falls into the two detectives’ hands, they set out to find the sender and decipher its cryptic message. This involves Holmes and Watson travelling not just through the land, but through time. More precisely, the time taken to develop the game – from game version 0.1 to patch 1.0 and beyond.
You can manipulate every part of this elastic adventure
Crushed in Time plays with the concept of the fourth wall, giving you an in-depth look at the video game development process. And when I say «in-depth», I mean in-depth. Right at the start, the opening video reveals that a character from the game has vanished, prompting severe review bombing. It’s up to you to jump into the game and prevent the worst from happening. Rather than taking on the role of Holmes or Watson, you experience their adventure from a developer’s perspective. Using the mouse, you steer the story in the intended direction by reshaping the world and its characters.
Crushed in Time’s main mechanic is introduced as soon as you see the home screen. Every element in the game can be clicked and dragged as if it’s made of rubber. Areas where it triggers a mechanic or action relevant to the game are marked with a small white dot. This works intuitively and rarely gets annoying, even in moments when the game demands millimetre-grade precision. To start the game, you drag the Adventure button with your mouse. At its core, it’s a classic point-and-click adventure.
Refreshingly different
Although the game opens up a bit from time to time – for example, with several rooms to explore inside buildings – your range of movement is seriously limited. You often only need to move a few metres to advance to the next part of the story. In other games in the genre, including Deponia, you sometimes have to navigate through numerous screens and lug items around for what feels like an eternity before finally getting to use them.
That’s another way in which Crushed in Time differs from many other point-and-click adventures: you don’t have an inventory for collecting items to use later. Since you aren’t actually part of the story (remember, you’re driving it forward as an outsider, pulling at the threads of the programming) you don’t have any possessions. Items needed elsewhere can be flicked across the screen or placed using other mechanics. Everything in the game is designed so that Holmes and Watson miraculously make progress as you solve their problems. The duo would be lost without you.
How to make a video game
As the game progresses, additional mechanics are introduced, brightening up the roughly seven-hour adventure. Just as I’m starting to tire of shoving Holmes around and shaking trees, the game has something new in store for me. Holmes and Watson travel through time, visiting not only new locations but also different stages in the game’s development process. Most sections play out very differently.
In the early stages of development (versions 0.1, 0.5, etc.) of Crushed in Time, many objects and characters are depicted as outlines or still have visible hitboxes. In the finished game, these disappear. Functions aren’t fully fleshed-out at this point either. Using the various buttons at the top of the screen, you can, for instance, choose whether to move or activate an item by clicking on it. Say, moving a cloud from left to right before assigning it the action of raining. Some of the puzzles in the game work according to this logic, revealing otherwise invisible programming mechanisms. Thanks to the simplified presentation, it’s easy to understand. At the same time, it delivers insight into the game development process that anyone unfamiliar with it will find fascinating.
I especially like the decision tree; it’s the type of thing you’re bound to have seen in a magazine at some point. Think flowcharts titled «Which Harry Potter house would you be in?». One answer always leads to a relevant follow-up question, until the result is eventually revealed. In Crushed in Time, you need to manipulate the answers so that the story unfolds in the direction you want.
My problem with the clue system
As I’m dragging, moving and tapping all sorts of things on the screen, I come across some extra puzzles that take serious brain power. While Holmes and Watson are happy to drop a few hidden clues as they experiment with puzzles in the environment, they’re less helpful when it comes to the static puzzles. In each level, you encounter at least one challenging puzzle. Like in other point-and-click games, you either need to solve it by finding clues around you or simply trying different things until you crack it. When an 8-bit game with no instructions suddenly popped up, it almost drove me over the edge. With all the constantly flashing elements and arcade-style noises, I barely had room to think.
You can opt for hints to be displayed on the right side of the screen whenever you need them. For the most part, the game does a good job of tailoring clues to what’s going on at a given moment. From the second third onwards, however, I started to notice more and more hints referring to puzzles that hadn’t even appeared yet.
At other times, a hint’s wording was too vague. Despite having five hints open in front of me, I still had to struggle through the puzzle using trial and error. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with having the odd brainteaser in the game. However, spending 20 minutes with zero clue where to start really sucks the fun out of it. I would’ve liked to have the option to skip these mini-games.
Crushed in Time will be released on 10 June 2026 for PC. Draw Me A Pixel provided me with a test copy of the game.
In a nutshell
A bizarre, meta-level game with elastic stumbling blocks
During the first few minutes of the game, I can’t decide whether Crushed in Time’s elastic mechanic is innovative or quite literally stretching out the story. The developers, however, have been super inventive, coming up with exciting twists that draw you from level to level. On the whole, I’m surprisingly keen on it.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson have a zany love-hate relationship, their banter and behaviour making sure this never goes unexpressed. The comic-book style is charming, with clean lines and minimal distraction. Crushed in Time has been stripped down to the essentials, virtually shoving everything you need to see right under your nose. Even at the points when the game looks like it’s still being developed.
With this blend of «finished» and «unfinished» aesthetics, Draw Me A Pixel gives you an endearing glimpse into the game creation process.
Pro
- The dynamic between Holmes and Watson is wonderfully written
- Constant tweaks to the traditional point-and-click gameplay add variety
- Good voiceover
- Incorporating a meta aspect into the game is an interesting concept
- A crazy story you can drop in and out of
Contra
- Clue system has room for improvement
- Puzzle difficulty level is unbalanced
- Some hitboxes are unnecessarily small
I didn’t have a Game Boy or a Super Nintendo as a child, and only joined the world of gaming at 15. I’ve been trying to make up for lost time ever since. But looking at the ever-growing number of game releases each year, it seems the entire industry is conspiring against me.
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