If the old ‘press button go bang’ style of shooter is starting to wear you down, then you might be intrigued by newly announced Lemnis Gate. Created by Canadian studio Ratloop Games and released as part of Elite developer Frontier’s new publishing initiative, it’s a tactical turn-based first-person shooter built around a constantly repeating 25-second time loop.
Lemnis Gate unfolds at some unspecified point in the far-flung future, with humanity on the brink of extinction. In an attempt to postpone its fate, Earth has built a massive interstellar device which, once activated, will sling the planet back in time by 50 years. Unfortunately, a whole heap of parallel universes have had the same idea and are now engaged in battle to be the one to turn on the device and be the reality that survives.
Whether or not that dollop of scene-setting ultimately makes the slightest bit of sense is largely irrelevant. Once in-game, Lemnis Gate jettisons anything approaching a story to focus its attention on its competitive time-manipulating multiplayer skirmishes, where, each round, combatants take turns adding their characters to a 25-second time loop.
