CamHostage
Member
TimeSplitters Rewind is a fan-made remake/homage of the TimeSplitters multiplayer combat arena gameplay, with authentic visual, audio, and mechanical systems and re-created maps and characters made anew in tribute to the TS game series. This isn't emulation or asset dumping; this is a remastering of TimeSplitters for a kind of greatest hits version of the series' arena combat play (with further modes to follow, if all goes to plan.) The project is being built in Unreal Engine and is semi-endorsed/allowed by franchise holder Plaion.
This is the first update on TimeSplitters Rewind since some major changes regarding the TimeSplitters franchise: the closure of Free Radical, the cancelation of the official TimeSplitters project at Embracer, and the upheaval that this industry news of the publisher's financial troubles left the project. The Rewind team missed their usual "annual" progress update, and finally came through with this, an unusual video update on its own.
Rather than a cheery reel of progress and promises (which has been exciting for fans to see every time they post about it... and then a year goes by and it still doesn't come out and the to-do list in the description keeps getting longer,) this is a more down-to-earth update on the status of the project and the state of the industry.
...The good news is, the game is still progressing. They've made strides every time they've shown it, and have a good deal of content made for the project in a fairly nice-looking, fast-paced, mostly-authentic version of the engine. And maybe the main good news of this posting is that it has survived some tragic happenings for the franchise as a while; no new legal issues have popped up in the Embracer fallout which would have doomed the project.
...The bad news is, there's still a ton to do on the project. They called it "content locked" last time for what they were calling their initial launch build, but this sounds like just an Early Access version of the game (which could be difficult to launch since they can't monetize like regular indie projects) and and even this launchable product (a small portion, feature set, and character selection of the final planned game) is still incomplete. Moreover, the downturn of the industry has made this hobby game difficult to prioritize since members of the team have apparently had less time on their hands to contribute for fun to TS Rewind with actual job demands (or unemployment) changing under their feet. Rewind still needs staffers of multiple disciplines (including character artists/animators, weapon animators, environment artists, a TD for the MapMaker feature, QA, and other contributors.) This project was originally announced way back in 2012, with some turbulent development history as it went along (as a lot of collaboratively-made fan-games tend to do, but 10+years is hard time to wait,) and although it's good to hear that the project is still alive, TimeSplitters Rewind is still not ready to test out and play.
Previous thread here:
TimeSplitters Rewind Update - Progress, Polish and Content Lock - December 2022
"With a whole year between our last update video, we're very glad you've stuck around to check out where we're at! We've been incredibly hard at work and we hope you like what you've seen here and we're very excited to be polishing things up and really refining what we have."
