Stargate

Stargate Timekeepers is a real time tactics game in the style of the old windows game Commandos. After (a continuing) release delay, they have released a demo of the first level. I will avoid story spoilers (not that there's much to spoil from the demo) and let you know my thoughts about the gameplay and potential of the full game.

First and foremost, I was a die hard fan of the original Commandos. I played the first 3 main games, including expansions, and also played a lot of fan made levels. During the evolution of Commandos, there were certain skills that were extremely overpowered, so the level design became sometimes insanely difficult. What you might call "save scumming" was the intended method of beating the levels.

Stargate Timekeepers is fairly shameless in ripping off Commandos. Many of the skills are a 1:1 equivalent and clearly meant to play used in the exact same way despite being inappropriate for the context of Stargate.

The demo is the first level of the game. As described in the promo material, it takes place at the battle of Antarctica from season 7 of SG-1. From the title there is the implication of time travel as part of the overall story.

Before I talk about the gameplay of Timekeepers, I first need to describe how Commandos worked. You had a team of Commando characters, each with specialised skills, that you had to coordinate around the level, defeating Nazi soldiers, blowing up German assets, freeing comrades, etc. Because your commandos were typically sneaking in to an enemy base, you had to perform these missions as a strict stealth operation. Raising alarms would cause more patrols (which were impossible to kill without raising additional alarms), or sometimes fail the mission.

The Commandos skills were unique to each character. For example, the Green Beret could punch a Nazi unconscious in one hit and carry dead bodies, while the Spy could dress up in German uniforms and distract Nazi soldiers but did not have the ability to punch or carry bodies. The expansion pack of Commandos added the rock throw, which made it trivial for the Green Beret to distract, then walk up behind a soldier to punch.

Now, Timekeepers. (Some of this will only make sense if you've play Commandos)
You get two generic SGC airmen. Straight away, I feel there's issues with these character builds. Between them, they have many of the Commandos equivalent skills and they are stacked all on these two characters. The Male airman is a combination of the Green Beret and the Sniper. While the Female airman is like the Driver but with nothing to drive. You can't go in guns blazing because anything that shoots bullets has limited uses, around 4 or 5, and they will often raise the alarm.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that in order to have the Green Beret skill of camouflage (where he can dig himself underneath snowy ground), they've given the Green Sniper a personal cloak. At no point did the SGC have access to this tech, and certainly not during season 7. In the game it's not even acknowledged how game changing this tech would be.

Another thing I thought was odd, from a level design point of view:
There are Kull supersoldiers in the game. These act as a type of enemy that cannot be beaten with the regular means of punching, P90, sniper, etc. I would have thought this type of enemy would be introduced in a later level and the means to defeat them would be introduced later still. Instead it appears that they are not only introduced immediately, but you get an infinite Kull disruptor on both characters.

The first level of Commandos was very simple. You had three characters in a small level divided by a stream. The Diver (not Driver) could cross the stream, but being unable to punch enemies meant you had to work towards getting the Green Beret and the Spy across. Before you could do that you needed to get the inflatable raft, and in order to do that you needed to get a German uniform for the Spy. There were only a few enemies to deal with in each section, and the methods to take them down were obvious and only mildly tricky.

The first level of Timekeepers seems like it's aimed at people who have already gotten good at games like Commandos, and are familiar with the staple strategies you learn over the course of that game. In my opinion, that's poor game design.

What I do like about it, is the new synchronize feature. I'm not sure if this was used in other games like Shadow Tactics (another Commandos clone), but it is a great gameplay mechanic that I wish was in all games like this. You can pause time, give out the commands to the characters and then choose whether they all execute immediately or if they are executed in a staggered start so that they all complete at the same time. This gives a whole new layer of control over tricky manoeuvres.

At the end of the demo you are given the release date of December 12th. Obviously that has come and gone. Late January is the current release date, but we will see if that gets delayed once again. From memory the first release date they gave was late 2022.

Overall I could enjoy the game, but I do have concerns about poor game design. If the first level feels like mid-game, how are the rest of the levels going to go? I get the feeling that each level is going just be a different puzzle to complete rather than an increase in strategical difficulty. The skills should have been spread better, and introduced slower. In the Demo you don't really have to go out of your way to use the characters to their strengths. There's only a few moments where you specifically need to use the Sniper, Whistle, Blinding-shot, or the Cloak (which are bizarrely all on the same character); you can use either character to go around punching people out.

At any rate, I'm going to purchase it when it's release on GOG because I did enjoy it, for lack of any other SG game. I just worry that players who are new to the genre will not have a good time.