Arkane Studio's Deathloop is one of the biggest and most anticipated AAA titles to have been released in 2021. It's an ambitious cycle of trapping players in a fully open unescapable death loop is bold, to say the least. The fact it's replayable and hardly a boring adventure says far more about its overall quality. However, Deathloop is far from the first title to truly explore time looping in video games.
A time loop, for those who don't know, is when a protagonist is stuck within a set series of events. To escape, they need to fulfill a requirement. In Deathloop, the protagonist needs to kill the eight targets scattered about the game. However, the task is not so straightforward in others. It's been an ever more common trope in gaming and other media but has proliferated the gaming industry for longer than one may expect.
9 The Spectre Files: Deathstalker Stayed Unreleased For Decades (1984)
The Spectre Files: Deathstalker has an extremely complex backstory on its creation. In short, the game was initially developed in 1984 but was unreleased until around 2017. If gamers are lucky, they might find one of the machines hiding in their local arcade. The game employs players as a detective investigating a girl's disappearance at a mysterious mansion.
Inside the said mansion, gamers will find every ghoulish and dastardly devil imaginable in a campy B-movie adventure. However, death is inevitable. For another dollar, players are encouraged to revisit paths and use previous knowledge to help them get further each time.
8 Explore Death On Another Planet In Another World (1991)
This classic Sci-Fi adventure puts players in the shoes of Lester, a young scientist trapped on an alien planet after a failed experiment. The game employs a trial and error system. Every time the player fails, they are sent backward slightly and are asked to try different results eventually allowing them to progress through the story.
While time looping is not at this point a strict mechanic, gamers can see the beginning of what would be the hallmarks of time-loop gaming: trial and error, repeated scenes and actions, and experimentation.
7 Help Five Humans In Search Of An Escape In I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (1996)
This terrifying Sci-Fi Point and Click adventure have players explore the psychological torments of five characters trapped in purgatorial torture by a computer known only as AM. The computer traps the five tortured souls in repeated nightmares of their own psychological and interpersonal failures. Escape seems impossible for these lost souls... or is it?
Players, using careful decision-making (and sometimes confusing 90's logic), are encouraged to try again and again to figure out the solution for these characters' survival and freedom from the eternal torture they face.
6 The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask Features One Of The More Intense Time-Loops (2000)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was one of the earliest examples of the time loop becoming an explicit plot point in a video game. In this entry in the long-running series, Link is given three days to save the town of Termina from a creepy giant moon about to crush the planet. If he should run out of time, Link is forced to use his Ocarina to go back in time and continue his adventure.
Failure to do so will result in the player losing all progress from that three-day time cycle. This was an incredibly novel idea by Nintendo to feature an entire game revolving around these mechanics, one many studios would later follow in suit.
5 Players Will Ask "How Many Times Can These Kids Kill Each Other?" After Playing Higurashi: When They Cry (2002-2014)
Higurashi: When They Cry is notorious as both a visual novel and anime and for good reason at that. It follows a group of innocent teenagers who are cast into a disturbing mystery as they explore the dark secrets behind their small town. At the end of each novel, they usually end up killing one another.
This series of visual novels leads to a larger story altogether. The story is split into question-and-answer "novels" or "arcs". With each iteration, minor events change causing a cascading effect through the rest of the story. As it turns out, the characters are trapped within a violent time loop, which none but one of them remembers arc to arc.
4 The Stanley Parable Isn't Afraid To Mock Players (2013)
The Stanley Parable is a game that is unafraid to make a mockery out of player choice. In the game, players take the role of Stanley as he follows (or not) the omniscient narrator telling him what to do. No matter the choice, this often leads to Stanley's death in one form or another. When the player feels defiant that they are breaking the game itself, there seems to always be that narrator taunting and following the player.
There's no escape from this menial absurd loop, posing players the question: do any choices you make in life really matter? One choice is certain: this is a game worth replaying before the remake.
3 Minit Explores An Incredibly Small Time Loop (2018)
Easily the shortest time loop on this list, Minit gives players, as expected, only one minute at a time to break the curse trapping the main character. In one minute, the player will die and restart the day. To help with this, players talk to NPC's and other characters to find tips and even new starting locations to slowly but surely expand out their map and break the curse.
This extreme time constraint can seem like a nightmare, but the ingenious game design of Minit makes it feel fresh with a constant "just one more minute" need from players.
2 Explore Alternate Versions Of Hamlet In Elsinore (2019)
Ever wondered if things in Hamlet could have turned out differently? Maybe nobody needed to die? Was there a way out of it all? In this indie point-and-click adventure, players play as Ophelia as she is trapped in a four-day time loop trying to figure out how to prevent the events of the play from going forward.
Does she confront Hamlet with her visions of death? Who can she trust? How can she show the Queen had no part in the death of Hamlet's murder? And how does she do all this in four days? It's the gamer's job to run through the possibilities and prevent one of Shakespeare's most bloody endings.
1 On The Brink Of Solar System Explosion In Outer Wilds (2019)
With only forty or so minutes before the collapse of an entire solar system, players explore multiple collapsing planets to uncover their mystery before their inevitable destruction in order to hopefully escape the time loop they are within. Outer Wilds is a beautifully designed and masterful gaming experience, having won multiple awards for its beautiful graphics and environments.
In each playthrough, players explore different areas of the solar system seeing the world collapse around them. One time gamers may see a planet's demise, and another they will entirely miss it. Each run fills in more and more mysteries surrounding this dying universe and whether the player can do anything to stop it.