Time Commander is a concept I originally came up with in 2004, but I haven't started doing anything with it until now. It's a 2D side view game. The player has a timeline with a slider control they can drag to any point in time, and the action on the screen plays forward and backward as they move the slider. The player controls various vehicles (a flying ship, a wheeled vehicle, etc.) by setting their controls (thrust, throttle, etc.) at different points in the timeline.
For example, an Asteroids style ship with rotation and thrust. The player might move the time slider forward and see that the ship collides with a wall. So they select an earlier point in time, and lower the forward thrust and set rotational thrust. Then they drag the time slider forward again to see if they miss the wall. They continue this process, getting the ship to make an ideal path through the level (avoiding obstacles, avoiding and returning enemy fire, etc.).
Or there could be a two-wheeled vehicle that has to make various jumps, etc. by setting the throttle and brake. Basically, any 2D, physically simulated vehicle.
Anyway, I'm working on a very early prototype to play with the different concepts. It's Flash, and you can
play with it here. It's just a random set of ships and rocks now (reloading the page gets a new random set). You can drag the time slider. If you click a ship, you can see and change it's forward and turn thrusters in the blue control panel, changing them at that point in time. Note that doing this regenerates all time after that point, so any future thruster changes you had made on any ships no longer exist.
I'm developing this using the "find the fun" iterative prototype approach. Already, from this early prototype, I've learned quite a bit about how the gameplay might feel and the kinds of issues I'm likely to run into with the gameplay and interface.
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