Time Moves On - Prototype Pitch Deck
A time bending 2D roguelike platformer where your friends will shape your run. Catch the next gondola. Pass the exams. Before time runs out.
Godot
PC
The Pitch
Kudo the cat, must travel a fragmented floating world and pass the wizarding exam at three schools. Friends met on the road join the party and grant new abilities. But every friend has their own path, and the bus to the next destination will not wait. Time itself reacts to how you play: sustained speed stretches time itself, so don't hesitate.
Design Pillars
A physics-driven traversal system where momentum, direction and parrying combine into skill expression that grows across a run. Walls, floors and dissolving terrain all become tools.
A non-linear countdown that stretches at high speed and contracts when moving slowly. The clock is a system to read and play, with items and abilities that bend it further.
Friends change how the game plays. Move too slowly and they take the next bus without you. Not everyone follows your path. But, as they say, you meet twice in life.
The World
A cataclysm gave animals consciousness, erased the old civilization, and lifted the shattered earth into floating islands. Rune-inscribed monoliths appeared, humming with ambient magic.
Solid matter is slowly dissolving back into free magical energy. Islands crumble at the edges. Skilled wizards convert that dissolution directly into momentum: a world coming apart is also a world becoming more powerful.
Four grand schools, Kull, Brunn, Frun and Saus, train every inhabitant to traverse the unstable landscape. Students may never take the exam at their own school. Traversing the land is the test.
Magic also flows between creatures who understand one another. Kudo's abilities are borrowed from friends. When a friend leaves, a small critter vestige keeps a weaker version of the bond alive.
The Player Character
A young wizard cat from Kull: big hat, sparkle accessory, purple triangular coat, pool-noodle limbs and one visible fang. The silhouette reads fast and a little stretchy. Kudo starts the journey confident but essentially alone. However, not for long. Many friends await.
Core Mechanics
Drag the slider. Faster movement stretches the level's total time budget; the tick dial slows down.
One button, three directions, a 5-frame window. The last frame is a perfect parry.
Pick a direction to see what it does.
The Journey
Choosing a school path after each level also chooses your next movement challenge. The route to every school passes through its plain, and each plain plays by its own physics.
Hohenberg · The Upper Plain
The Alpine islands of Hohenberg, rise above the kingdom. Wooden scaffolding and light fabrics adapt to the high winds. Right angles dominate, so precision matters. Wall bounces, upward parries and high jumps carry you through towers and opposing-wall climbs. Missing a platform is punishing, and gravity works against you.
School of Brunn. Endurance and vertical agility. Home of the royal family Antritz and the most prestigious school in the kingdom, despite its current state.
Wellenfeld · The Middle Plain
The grassy field of Wellenfeld, strechts across islands of rolling hills. Mounds, trees and tall grass sway gently in the breeze. Shallow angles allow Kudo to preserve momentum, creating a rhythm of traversing gaps: Some cleared with a simple jump, others demand speed, dashing or a perfectly timed parry. Always cheerful and bright, never dark.
School of Frun. Speed and horizontal momentum, the most widely practiced tradition in the kingdom. Frun trains generalists.
Tropffall · The Lower Plain
Tropffall is the most dissolved terrain in the kingdom: glowing mushrooms, alien ferns, tear-shaped platforms with narrow tops and wide bellies. Descend through long drops, manage fall speed, and dive along a teardrop's curve to convert a deadly fall into pure horizontal speed. Beautiful and eerie.
School of Saus. Transformation. What others consider dangerous, Saus students consider a resource.
Between Levels
Every leg of the journey is ridden on a gondola, part cable-car, part creature. Inside is the social hub: browse the item shop, buy friendship items at the vending machine, and sit with your party by the window while the broken world drifts past. Run out of time, though, and it leaves without you.
The Party
Each friend grants an ability with three tiers. Recruit them, lose them to their own journeys, and find them again to unlock their strongest form. Scroll sideways, click a card for the full story.
"When a friend leaves, they leave a little critter behind.
Weaker than the original. But still real."
Vestiges keep a Level 0 version of a departed friend's ability, take no party slot, and crawl out of Kudo's coat when you stand still. Reunite with the friend while their vestige is with you, and they return at Level 2, stronger than before. Departure is memory, never loss.
The Examiners
Each exam is a race. The chancellor conjures a copy of Kudo that runs the course at par time. Beat it, earn the badge. Lose, and the run ends.
Elegant and thoughtful. Chancellor of Kudo's own modest home school.
A prince of his noble house, yet insecure because of his older brother Deusolbert.
Wise. Talks slowly. Uses few words.
Each tentacle has its own brain, used to solve Rubik's cubes. Probably the mightiest wizard in the kingdom.
Scope & Milestones
Running, jumping and falling on the full physics spec. All three parry directions. Hover and Dive at Level 1, playable in grey-box.
Tick system with speed-based dilation and the circular countdown display.
The tutorial playable start to finish, the recruit/vestige loop functional, and all three pillars demonstrated to funders.
All 9 level layouts, 12 friend backstories, bus dialogue, concept art and ~25 item effects specified before implementation begins.
A complete run from Level 0 through Boss 3, handed to external playtesters while there is still time to act on feedback.
Full asset integration, balance pass and polish. 12 friends, 9 levels, 3 exams, one session, ready to show.
