Fresh off my recent obsession with Hell Clock (read my review here), I couldn’t resist diving into another time-bending roguelike.
Panta Rhei – Guardian of Time released on PC and Mac last week, and over the weekend, I’ve spent about an hour exploring the Realm of Time to bring you some very early impressions.
What is Panta Rhei?
Panta Rhei is an adventure roguelike that sees players manipulate the flow of time to solve puzzles and defeat enemies and bosses. You play as Phi, a Guardian of Time exiled in the Garden of Past since the Great Cataclysm. With chaos threatening to unravel time itself, Phi must journey to the Origin of Time to restore balance.
The game is a traditional roguelike, meaning there’s no meta progression to permanently strengthen your character between runs. However, you can find temporary upgrades across the Realm of Time that boost your abilities during each run. While death doesn’t mean a complete game over, it does force you to start fresh, encouraging you to hone your combat skills before taking another stab.
Time is a weapon
After unleashing my anger on the training dummy, it wasn’t long before I encountered my first battle. The action in Panta Rhei is fast-paced, with the developers citing Hyper Light Drifter as a major influence. You have several combo attacks that you can chain together, as well as a dodge to pull yourself out of the path of danger. Personally, its top-down perspective and snappy pacing reminded me a lot of Death’s Door.
During combat encounters, your health slowly drains, encouraging speedy action and ramping up the tension whilst you’re sitting on low health. Luckily, death doesn’t mark the end of your run, as you have several hourglasses you can use to revive yourself. You can also restore your health bar by exploring and finding consumables outside of battle.
I was also able to check out the first of the game’s time-bending powers, one that allowed me to rewind time and repeat my last move. This power was essential for shattering the shields of certain enemies, including the very first boss. It also had uses outside of combat, as I needed to destroy several crystal barriers that were blocking my path.
Before wrapping up with my closing thoughts, I have to give a shout-out to the game’s excellent presentation. The game’s opening cutscene is fully animated and looks just like a beautifully crafted cartoon. The same artistic flair is also carried over to the game’s simple yet striking visuals, which reminded me an awful lot of the equally charming Tunic.
Buy or Sell?
It’s too early to say whether I would recommend picking up Panta Rhei, but it did leave a positive first impression. From my initial hour with the game, I’m excited to see what new time powers will be introduced and how they build onto the combat and puzzle-solving.
The combat feels satisfying and fast-paced, the visuals are simplistic and charming, and its time-bending powers add enough variety to help it stand out from other roguelikes. Let’s hope that it’s able to keep up the momentum and that the rest of the game lives up to this promising start.
Panta Rhei – Guardian of Time is out now on PC (Win and Mac), and I played the game via access kindly provided by the developer. It’s probably also worth noting that there’s a demo on Steam, so you can try before you buy.
