Dexterous Time to Steal
- Roger
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
The Time Mafia
After being imprisoned for years, you were eventually released. However, the boss additionally reminded you that your father's and your debts have been growing in interest over the years and that payment is due in three days.
The only way to pay up the bills and save your life is by going down to town and taking out the boss's rivals and their goons.
The Game of The Play
Dexterous Time to Steal is a Turn-Based Strategy, Match 3, Fantasy, Pixel Graphics game. And it is about a guy who got released from prison and is told about their family’s debts that are due in three days. And the only way to gather together enough money to pay off the debts is through taking down rival bosses.
After defeating all three bosses, you will fight a 4th one, your own boss. Once defeated, he will turn back time, and you will have to restart. But inside your hideout you can unlock perks that stay during resets.
The hideout is where you can purchase upgrades that don’t disappear during resets. Upgrades can be bought with stone, wood, cheese, and currency for upgrades that give extra power blocks or health. After the reset you will lose all your relics, unlocked blocks, and block upgrades and only be left with 100 gold.
The gameplay itself plays out like a Roguelite combined with Match 3 and Tetris. You start with three blocks of each of six colors: Blue, Green, Orange, Red, Yellow, and Silver. Purple is the seventh block and can be unlocked or bought (I think it can be bought).
Each color has its standard abilities, which vary within that block color. After playing for a while, you can notice that certain colored blocks have their own topic of abilities.
While other colors can have similar abilities but belong to a whole different topic with other abilities. For example, Blue is mainly protection and support, with a shield ability that gives the player shield points. But Silver does heavy damage but also has the shield ability to give shield points.
When the player finishes a fight or finds a chest, they can unlock a new block with or without abilities that is added to their inventory, causing the chance of matching with the color of the new block to be higher. Or the player can upgrade any block in their inventory to either upgrade an ability or unlock a new ability on a blank colored block. Abilities can only be upgraded 3 times from the blank stage.
During a battle you can see your number of moves on your cursor and in the bottom right corner. And to see what each ability does, hold L-ALT and hover the cursor over the block.
The same goes for the action icon above the enemy; that way you can see what their next move is during their upcoming turn, so you can either prepare for their attack or bombard them with attacks if they try to heal or shield.
Right after or before entering/exiting a fight, the player can move their cursor to move the screen and have a look at the battle map. It shows the player if they’re fighting goons or mini bosses or find a chest, shop, or my favorite, the ( ? ) Which can either be a chest with a relic, a random event, or a normal fight.
And last but not least, the heart, which gives the option to heal 20% of max health, upgrade any block in inventory, or remove any block in inventory.
Relics are odd, both because there are a lot of them with different kinds of powers and also because when finding relics in chests you can only find one and choose that one, while after boss fights you can choose between three relics.
And there is even a relic that gives more relic options when finding a relic, but it would’ve been better to have two relics to choose one from, and the relic that adds makes it 3 relics where the player can only choose one.
Gives the whole thing more of a decision-making process than just only one option.
Dying causes you to lose all your progress and save files. It’s Perma-Death basically.
Visual & Audio
Visuals
The game is made with a pixel graphic style, with less than half the upper screen for background texture and character & enemy movements/attacks.
While the rest of the lower screen holds the Tetris-resembling tab with the colored blocks that need to be matched in 3 or more of the same color in a vertical or horizontal line.
It also displays the player's inventory of material used for upgrades, their health, and their amount of moves.
Each boss territory has its own background during fights, so it's not the same environment for each boss the entire time.
And every territory boss has their own different kind of goons and mini bosses. Fit for the theme of the boss and their territory.
Otherwise there isn’t that much that needs to be brought up.
Audio
The sound effects drill into my ears; at original/standard settings when first opening the game, it's way too loud. Only when turning them down to like 20% does it sound actually pretty good.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Gameplay
Graphics
Replayable
Sound & Music (If turned down)
Amount of Abilities & Upgrades for Them
Cons
Choosing a Relic Between Only 1 Option
Quite Loud Sound Effects as Original/Standard
My Final Little Thoughts
The game is difficult to explain, but trust me, it’s quite enjoyable to play even with such simple pixel graphics.
It's highly replayable; lower the audio for a better time and simply try out the lots of amounts of combos and fighting styles depending on your luck.
And maybe even finish the whole game, upgrade everything in your hideout, and obtain every relic once.
The price is questionable at first, but after playing for some hours, it’s worth its price, both because of the gameplay and the amount of content and abilities, combos, relics, and just random paths you can go.
Dexterous Time to Steal is recommended to anyone who would want to try.
Rating: 8/10
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
