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Cut the Rope: Time Travel Review
When it released in 2010, mobile gamers quickly fell in love with Cut the Rope. It featured an adorable character, gameplay that was perfectly suited to touchscreens, and brief levels that lent themselves to on-the-go gaming. Cut the Rope: Time Travel takes all of the elements that worked so well for the original title and adds a fun new wrinkle that shakes up the gameplay.
In the original, players were tasked with cutting ropes in an effort to drop a piece of candy into green blob Om Nom’s mouth. Achieving this goal isn’t always a simple affair, since the game encourages you to collect three stars on each level to truly clear it. Time Travel features the same concept, but pairs Om Nom up with an ancestor from various historical periods in each stage.
Cutting ropes is still the name of the game, but you have to feed both Om Noms before you move on to the next stage. It amounts to one more mouth to feed, but it also forces you to approach stages in a different manner than in previous games. In the original (and Cut the Rope: Experiments), each stage’s goal is basically “get these stars and then feed Om Nom.” With the addition of the ancestors, the game forces you to plan ahead so that both characters get their reward.
New gameplay elements are introduced frequently throughout the six time periods. Portals alter the path of candy, clock hands can be rotated to affect the placement of objects, and flying pieces of candy mimic the path of standard pieces. I enjoyed all of these new elements, and they interact well with each other, as well as with previously introduced objects like rockets and bounce pads. No element is dwelled upon long enough to become tiresome, as each stage offers a novel challenge.
Adding another Om Nom doesn’t drastically alter the feel of Cut the Rope, but it’s enough of a change to make Time Travel feel like a proper sequel. It won’t take you too long to collect three stars in each level, but the developer promises new levels on the way soon. Cut the Rope: Time Travel is a great follow-up to one of the most successful games on iOS, and proves to be well worth the asking price.
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