Time Clickers is a hybrid Idle Game/First-Person Shooter released by Proton Studio in 2015, as a spin-off of Time Rifters. In this game, you destroy waves of enemies via clicking or passive DPS to collect money in order to upgrade gun teammates and buy abilities. What sets this apart from other PvE clickers is that enemies are made out of cubes which all need to be destroyed via clicking or teammates, and different teammates specialize in destroying cubes differently. Collect elusive Time Cubes to improve your abilities after a Time Warp, and later on, Weapon cubes to improve your weapon.
It can be played on the web (here
), on Steam, or on mobile devices.
This game provides examples of:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: As a clicker game, your level cap is theoretically infinite, and weapons can be leveled up nearly infinite times as long as you have the money to do so.
- Alpha Strike: One notable mechanic is that, if there's one block left, all your guns will target it. Each gun has an associated artifact that allows one to do multiplied click damage to the block it targets. This allows said multipliers targeting a block to stack when multiple guns target it, allowing you to destroy a high health block (like a yellow or Time/Weapon Cube) in very few clicks thanks to the massive damage.
- Anti-Frustration Features: This game is heavily reminiscent of Clicker Heroes, but with a lot of
frustrating features removed, and several ways to enhance the experience:- Collected Time Cubes, even if spent, will contribute to your DPS multiplier, rather than needing unspent ones to do so.
- When one does a Time Warp, they're allowed to buy, sell, and thus respec their artifacts before starting a new run. Doing so is free and does not incur any "selling" penalty.
- Instead of obtaining a random selection of upgrades to choose from (and during a re-roll), you can easily select which upgrade to power up in the Tech Tree.
- If your DPS is extremely high enough to overkill the mooks and bosses many times over, the game will enter an "overpowered" state and fast-forwards, allowing you to skip through levels of Cannon Fodder much quicker.
- After you destroy a boss, Maximum Power occurs, activating all your abilities will be activated without needing a cooldown for a few seconds, allowing one to plow through the next few waves while obtaining more money- much better than the bee that activated a random powerup from Clicker Heroes.
- The game actually hints when it's possible to level a weapon to the next upgrade tier, as well as whether one can buy the upgrade after that. Furthermore, there's different ways to level a weapon- such as to the next upgrade level, the next promotion level, or the maximum.
- Via Cloud Save, it's possible to sync a saved game from the PC with mobile devices and vice versa.
- Competitive Balance:
- The Pulse Pistol is the Master of None, dealing rather weak but focused damage on a single block. It does become a Support Party Member when you click the block it's constantly targeting, however.
- The Flak Cannon is the Fragile Speedster, hitting random blocks for relatively low damage but firing quickly.
- The Spread Rifle is the Jack of All Stats, focusing on three blocks to whittle their health down.
- Both the Rocket Launcher and the Particle Ball are the Mighty Glaciers, hitting hard but at a slow rate of fire. But while the Rocket Launcher is the area nuker, the Particle Ball acts as the Critical Hit Class sniper.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Each teammate weapon has a color associated with them- Blue for Pulse Pistol, Yellow for Flak Cannon, Red for Spread Rifle, Green for Rocket Launcher, and Purple for Particle Ball. Whenever a block is under fire from them, their outline will glow with the respective color of the attacker, allowing the player to click the block for extra damage.
- Likewise, the blocks themselves come in three main colours- fragile red, moderately durable white, very tough yellow, each giving 10x the amount of gold as the last. The rainbow block is as fragile as a red, but gives the same amount as a yellow.
- Critical Hit: The Particle Ball has a slow rate of fire and very high damage, and on every fifth shot it will fire an attack that deals 5x its normal amount.
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: As the levels progress, your DPS will eventually start getting overtaken by the enemy health. Luckily, any time cubes obtained will permanently increase your DPS for the next run onwards, and you're able to upgrade your DPS, allowing you to eventually solve this problem.
- Everything's Better with Rainbows:
- Rainbow cubes drop the same amount of gold as a yellow cube, which is 100x that of a red cube. Unlike yellow cubes that have 100x the health of a red cube, the rainbow cube is as weak as a red.
- The Rainbow Ball will enter the screen periodically, and clicking it gives you a phenomenal amount of gold.
- Expy: The "Dimension Shift" ability is this game's version of "The Dark Ritual" from Clicker Heroes, permanently increasing your DPS by 1.05 times, and having a massively long cooldown.
- Meta Power-Up: Several of the artifacts are these, increasing money gain, turning the more durable White and Yellow blocks into weaker blocks, increasing the chance of finding Time Cubes, etc.
- Metal Slime: The Rainbow Ball appears rarely, floats around the screen for a few seconds before escaping, and if clicked, it gives a huge amount of gold.
- Mighty Glacier: The Rocket Launcher and Particle Ball hit very hard (the former with Splash Damage, the latter with a Critical Hit every five shots), but have the slowest rates of fire.
- New Game Plus: Known as Time Warp, this allows the player to start a new game with the Time Cubes they have collected the previous run, which adds to their DPS multiplier and also allows them to buy artifacts.
- Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: Achievements give a percentage boost to damage.
- One Stat to Rule Them All:
- When it comes to weapons, Fire Rate. In this game, speed is everything thanks to the limited time of Maximum Power after beating a boss. This allows them to finish off block formations much faster, keeping Maximum Power for longer, and most importantly its Money Multiplier effect. And unfortunately, there's no way to improve this via abilities or artifacts.
- Starting Gold when it comes to Artifacts. By having more Starting Gold, one can get enough money to level their weapons to the point it achieves "Overpowered" mode, which speeds up the killing (but not the decrease in Maximum Power time), and even allows Maximum Power to stack.
- Piñata Enemy: There's a chance where an entirely rainbow block formation appears. Rainbow cubes have the same amount of health as a red cube but give 100x the amount of a red cube.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: The Click Cannon is essentially one, firing a randomly-spread burst of bullets in a wide cone when clicked.
- Spread Shot:
- The Scatter Pistol Upgrade shoots a horizontal spread of bullets.
- The Flak Cannon targets three random blocks each time and shoots at them.
- The Spread Rifle targets three random blocks and focuses attacks on them until they are destroyed.
- Tech Tree: The artifacts one can obtain via Time Cubes are separated this way. Ability focuses on improving ability effects, Damage focuses on teammate weapon damage, Click focuses on clicking damage, Gold focuses on obtaining gold, and Progress makes game progression quicker and more efficient.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If your DPS is way higher than the enemy's health (at least a million times or so), the game acknowledges this, and enters a fast-forwarded "Overpowered" mode to save you time of killing Cannon Fodder.
