History VideoGame / Timelapse

*** If you defeat the Guardian, but break the Timegate, then you become trapped and die of starvation, and Nichols remains in his prison. The epilogue also mentions that the scientists are planning to try and release the Guardian...

* [[spoiler: AnythingButThat: If you manage to trap the Guardian in the stasis chamber, he cries, "No, not stasis!" just before being frozen.]]

The story begins with you receiving a message from an old archaeologist friend, Alexander Nichols, who has spent his entire life attempting to prove his theory that the ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Anasazi and Easter Islanders shared a common connection...the lost city of {{Atlantis}}. Nichols reveals that he has at last found proof in the form of a mysterious time machine on Easter Island that provides access to major sites of each civilisation at a different point in time, and implores you to join him as he tests it.

* AncientEgypt: One of the worlds.

* PreColumbianCivilizations: The Mayan World and the Anasazi World.

* SurpriseCreepy: There are some jarringly disturbing animations scattered around the time periods, from a skewered Mayan monkey head that screeches if you click on it, to an Egyptian statue that talks and briefly becomes filled with snakes ''through its eyes and ears''.

* EenieMeenieMinyMoai: Easter Island is the starting point of the game. The Moai themselves contain clues to unlocking the time gate.

** RockPaperScissors: One puzzle in the Mayan world is this, except it uses dangerous animals instead. Scorpion poisons Frog, Frog eats Spider, Spider ensnares Scorpion.

* SuperiorSpecies: The Atlanteans viewed themselves as this, and made contact with sufficiently-advanced civilisations across the globe [[spoiler: with the intention of genetically

** If you defeat the Guardian, free Nichols and return to Earth, you become a rich and famous superstar for your travels and for the technology you bring back with you. Oddly, Nichols isn't mentioned at all in the epilogue, despite the fact that it's his discovery and story that you've usurped.

* EternalEnglish: The video projections in each time period are all spoken in English. Nichols speculates in his journal that Atlantean translators allow anyone to interpret them.

* SuperBreedingProgram: To repopulate their homeworld with inhabitants of the four civilisations they chose to aid, the Atlanteans created four "Gene Pods" containing Atlantean genetic material that could be used on any person which would result in their children being super-smart prodigies. [[spoiler: Alexander Nichols is revealed to have used them on himself towards the end of the game, and several of the bad endings confirm he would later father a NobelPrize winning son]].

* RayGun: The Atlanteans have a variable Energy Beam Tool, [[spoiler: which they used to aid the other civilizations in construction. You have to use this near the end to defeat the Guardian once and for all.]]

* TheReveal: Atlantis was created by [[spoiler: aliens as a temporary settlement until they could return to their irradiated homeworld, but they were stopped from leaving Earth when Santorini erupted]]. The four civilisations were given technologies by them, but used them in vary different ways;