Delivers Fun and Hilarity in Equal Measure | No Time to Explain Review

When you load up Tiny Build’s No Time to Explain, you’re immediately greeted with a little dude dancing in his house. Next, you see “you from the future” bust through the wall, utter the famous “No Time to Explain” line, only to be snatched up by a giant mutant space crab.

No, this isn’t a joke and it isn’t a lie. That’s legitimately how the game kicks off before you go on a multidimensional adventure, and I love it. Everyone enjoys a light-hearted game every once in a while, but No Time to Explain is actually hilarious and fun to boot.

The crucial thing to know about No Time to Explain is that it isn’t your average platformer. It’s unique characteristic is the laser gun you use to propel yourself around the game. It’s a bit unusual at first, but the idea is very easy to pick up and is so much more enjoyable than just jumping and walking.

Once you get the hang of it, and that won’t be long, the game really starts to feel natural. Whether it’s propelling yourself upwards in a bit of a “rocket jump” fashion or blasting it slightly behind you to send you flying forward at mach speed, it all becomes relatively easy to handle and adapt.

Plus, the game has various levels where you don’t use the main “present” character and get to use other characters instead, all just versions of you. My personal favorite, and I don’t want to spoil anything, is based around eating cake and getting unreasonably fat. This introduces “fat mechanics” and has you playing a completely different style of way than you were previously.

The gameplay is terrific, and it’s variety and unique systems keeps it fresh and fun. This is not to mention that the game does get fairly challenging as you progress. As the game’s story and environment starts to heat up, so does the difficulty, and in a really great way.

Speaking of story, it may seem like it’s out of control with phrases like “fat mechanics” and “giant mutant space crab” flying around, and that’s correct. No Time to Explain berates the player with plot developments like no other, and it’s almost like if Tiny Build just sat down, took ideas, and tried to incorporate them all into the game.

If that was the case, they’ve done it exceptionally well. Despite being somewhat random at times, the game’s cutscenes and story progression are entertaining and have actual comedic value. Don’t come into No Time to Explain with a serious attitude, it’s much better to just take it for what it is: funny.

The story progress at a ridiculous fast pace, and considering that the player has such little time to invest in it, it makes it much easier to just sit back and laugh at. It seems what Tiny Build was going for, and that’s exactly how I felt throughout the game.

This is Tiny Build’s first game as a studio, and while it was based off of co-founder Tom Brien’s flash game from 2011, it’s revamped and has a lot more work and detail put into it. Such is the power of getting to work with better quality PCs and the Xbox One.

The people at Tiny Build deserve a fair amount of praise for creating a game that is hilarious, fun and different from a lot of titles. The game reminds me of fellow developer Behemoth’s work(Castle Crashers, Battleblock Theater), but it does plenty to stand out and it deserves respect for  that.

Overall, the game is unique, fun and hilarious. It ran perfectly on my Xbox One, and at $14.99, it’s a fair price for what I consider to be one of the top indie games of 2015, at least for the Xbox One.