A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies, released in 2024 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, is…

Okay, let me stop for a moment. Every now and then on eShopperReviews, I like to get creative and do an “Event” Game Review to highlight a game that’s particularly unusual, creative, or fourth wall-breaking. I really enjoy making these, and I’m quite proud of them. And for a brief moment, I contemplated making something like this for A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies, but I quickly decided against it, for two reasons – first, it’s going to be hard enough conveying to you just what this game even is without getting cute about this review. And second, no matter what sort of insanity I try to put into this review, it simply cannot match the experience of playing A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies.

So moving forward in the knowledge that I don’t think I can ever properly convey the bizarre nature of this game, A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies is a jumbled mix of genres ranging from FMV Game to Walking Simulator to a physics-based interactive Simulation to a simple Arcade game… yeah, this thing is all over the place, and it’s all wrapped within the premise that you are watching or participating in a sort of interactive YouTube series starring a time-travelling sock puppet whose main reason for exploring Earth’s history is to learn about and sample lost recipes throughout time.

It’s a silly setup that seems sure to be good for laughs, but this game’s presentation is consistently unsettling in a way that laughter is often nervous laughter. Said time traveler, Captain Coolimbus (pronounced by all characters as if the “Cool” in the name has about seven “O”s) is mostly depicted via live-action video footage, usually presented on-screen in a bordered window, as if this was a CD-ROM game from the early days of the FMV Game genre. All of the characters speak with a hard-to-place accent with poor sound quality and often mumbled voices, so it’s much appreciated that the characters’ lines are subtitled (though often not accurately, as if these characters can’t help but go off-script).

Coolimbus’ goofy nature seems to mask some dark sentiments, as he talks flippantly about murders and genocides, implies that Middle Ages men dying in wars and The Black Plague makes for great “opportunities” for time travelers now that those who remain are mostly women, and early into the game it becomes clear that this character has no compunctions about straight-up lying to you. And then of course there are other bizarre fourth wall-breaking moments as an ominous sock puppet who interrupts the game to teach you about making sock puppets.

Yeah, if you were ever looking for a game to freak you out while you’re using recreational substances, I would think this is it. If you choose to do so, I take no responsibility for your state of mind after.

These video snippets are often followed with Cooking Simulator-style segments where players need to interact with futuristic machinery to materialize ingredients and toss them into the correct receptacle, or something. These portions have absolutely zero interest in accuracy or consistency, and that’s a good thing, because the controls and physics in these bits are absolutely horrendous, with ingredients being extremely finicky when it comes to letting you select them to drag and drop into place, and wildly bouncing out of pans the moment you gently drop them in.

If I had any notion that this was a game that took itself seriously or thought that this gameplay was supposed to be inherently fun, I would absolutely be giving it an F. But here, it feels like yet one more simulation of outdated archaic videogame media to further help build the bizarre atmosphere of the game.

Speaking of which, you’ll find yourself in an odd maze collecting ingredients, with no enemies or timer, just a chore to do before the game lets you move on. Again, terrible gameplay… but I’m positive that the game’s designers knew this and did so intentionally.

At other points, you’ll take time-traveling trips to the past, which is not only in absolutely no way realistic, but rendered using ugly outdated 3D with garish contrasting elements and human characters with ugly giant heads. Here, you’re expected to take “photographs” like an old-school CD “virtual encyclopedia”, with Coolimbus commenting on the points of interest you photograph.

Finally, I should be sure to note that A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies is extremely short. You can easily reach the end of it within an hour or so. However, at $5 this is somewhat more forgivable.

So, after all that… is A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies a good game? Absolutely not. Is it a bad game? Not really, no. Is it even a game at all? Honestly, I’m not even sure. I can say that it is absolutely a “love it or hate it” experience, and the deciding factor will likely be just how much you enjoy the bizarre, as well as archaic games media, because this game is absolutely filled to the brim with references to both. In any case, I think it’s fair to say that this is certainly a unique and creative artistic… thing… and it makes for a truly one-of-a-kind experience.

tl;dr – A Time Traveller’s Guide To Past Delicacies is nominally a… game? … that has you interacting with a time-traveling sock puppet who is fixated on recipes from throughout Earth’s history. However, what this really ends up being is a fever dream of an experience that blends together outdated videogame media elements with terrible gameplay and an archaic presentation to create something that is nevertheless compelling and truly bizarre. I don’t really feel comfortable giving this game a letter grade. This game defies being graded in such a way.

Grade: ?

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Misc. Game – Is this the “best” Misc. game? That’s tough to say, because this game is just so bizarre that what you think of it is really going to be subjective. But I truly believe it is unquestionably the one game in 2024 that most exemplifies what it is to be a “Misc. Game”, and so that in my mind makes this the most deserving game to win this award.

Most Original – It’s a testament to how much this game belongs in the Most Original category that I don’t even know how to describe its gameplay to you in a concise way that would make sense. It’s a Walking Simulator… and also a Cooking Simulator, and also an FMV game… and there are occasional minigames that are deliberately bad, and that somehow actually adds to the game rather than detracting from it? Yeah, this game is weird, but it’s weird in a way that’s so incredibly unique that it demands to be played.

Best New Character – Captain Coolimbus – This is such a bizarre game, and much of the reason why is the game’s central character, Captain Coolimbus, who is charismatic, enthusiastic, helpful, has questionable priorities, and extremely questionable morals. On the surface he’s a silly character in a silly game – he’s a sock puppet, for goodness sake! But… something about him seems untrustworthy, creepy, and it’s hard not to wonder what his motives are. The entire time you’re interacting with this cheerful, goofy character is unsettling, which is a juxtaposition that’s truly impressive to see in a character.

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