Tempo is a third-person adventure game where you play a psychic in a wheelchair. Coming fresh out of España, the work of Cristian Pastor, who collaborated with Pat and Jesus and Alex, Tempo is one of the most technically furbished freeware games you can find on the net. Winner of the game award at the Creanimax Festival 2007, a showcase of Latin American student art. Since it's a university-funded game, the creators had the freedom to come up with anything they wanted, the result is both inspiring and limited.
The backstory behind Tempo paints a mysterious, maybe even vague, backdrop of cataclysmic conflict, with the sole survivor of the losing side traveling to the "Tower of Time" so she can go back to the future o lo que. This has practically nothing to do with the gameplay other than establishing the tone of the environment you're exploring. This is the area where Tempo succeeds strongly -- it establishes a mood of wonder and apprehension with a garnish of sorrow (i.e. too much rosemary). You get a sense that the game is trying to communicate something very important, though the precise pattern never quite congeals.
The gameplay is pretty good, an interesting twist on the usual environmental puzzle game. Your avatar is in a wheelchair, she can move around with the WASD keys; the Z key causes you to go into astral projection mode, where you become a physically fit version of yourself capable of double jumping and climbing and so forth. The double jumping in particular is nice, as mis-jumping rarely becomes a frustration. The difference between the astral mode and something like Tomb Raider is that you have no commitment in your movements, no risk of death or irreversible movements -- there's a lot of puzzle-design potential in this. Pressing Q in your wheel chair allows you to control highlighted objects with your telekinetic mind powers, manipulating platforms or flipping switches. Taken together, there's tremendous potential for extension here, so even if Tempo is not so radically original as its artistic pretense might indicate, its still a fresh twist on a decent genre, executed with polish.
Which brings me to the great limitation: there's only one level. Of course there's only so much time in a semester to work on content when you're modifying the tech foundation, going to classes, getting wasted, contemplating breaking up with your girlfriend so you can mess around before graduation, stuff like that, so you can't blame them. You can however pledge that this game could be something fantastic if developed into a full product; it'd make a great PC download and great WiiWare, and I highly courage Cristian and crew to explore their tempos further.
