Indian game developers Tiny Mogul Games recently launched Shiva: The Time Bender in the Play Store. The game is an Arcade and action genre game, and revolves around Shiva, who is a time traveler, traveling in various years, killing enemies while earning Orbs. The concept is, you have to earn as many Orbs you can, and you will get to use more powers and weapons accordingly.
Coming to the gameplay, tap on your left to jump, and right to attack with your weapon. You can anywhere on the screen side as there isn’t any gamepads given. You are guided every time you start the game from the scratch. Going into the rounds, you earn Orbs, which allow you to move further with more weapons and powers. In between, you sometimes also get to earn special powers like Rage Mode, which makes the player destroy any enemy that comes in front without you having to tap once. The most interesting thing about the gameplay is its time mode. This allows you to go back into your game depending on the fuel you have in tank. For instance, if you get killed by an enemy, you can tap on the time out roller at the bottom, and see the game flashing back till you keep the roller pressed or as much you fuel you have in tank (whichever occurs first). You have to time your time roll out well so that you get to kill the enemy which just killed you, or maybe time that jump better in order to move ahead in the round. The player runs on its own, and you are mainly given the powers to jump and use your weapon.
Talking about its graphics, they are decent for a game this size and level. There aren’t too many bad spots, but nothing extraordinary about its graphics. Sounds used in the game are typical but well chosen. They jam well with the game’s pace and type.
The game is pretty good to start with, but when you get killed and run out of fuel in your tank, it starts from the first round. Also, there is no sequence in the game for rounds. After the first one, you get to play any randomly chosen round, and not a particular round. This seemed quite odd, but probably goes well with the whole “time traveling” theme of the game.
All in all, Shiva: The Time Bender is a decent small-size game that is fun to play and not very lengthy. It would be better if the developers could add a few more levels that are different from the existing ones, and fix the issue of seeing black bars on both sides. You can download this from the Play Store (22 MB).
