My subject today doesn’t simply break the fourth wall so much as it vaporizes the fourth wall, looks the player in the eye, and addresses them by name while informing them that an entire wall appears to have somehow gone missing. What we’ve got here is Crushed in Time, developed and published by Draw Me a Pixel. Crushed in Time is a point-and-click — or, rather, point-click-and-stretch — puzzle adventure game starring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. The story of Crushed in Time is set in motion when Dr. Watson receives both a letter and an unwanted hug from the postman.

Dr. Watson then discovers that Sherlock has both fallen asleep in his office and locked the door, both of which you’ll have to rectify. Fortunately for you, you’ll have learned almost the entirety of Crushed in Time’s control scheme just by navigating the main menu before you even begin the campaign. Every interactive object in Crushed in Time requires you to click and hold the left mouse button, stretch whatever you’ve clicked on towards a certain direction, and then release the mouse button to cause something to happen. If stretching in a certain direction is required, you’ll see an arrow telling you so.

Some objects differ slightly by requiring you to rotate the mouse clockwise or counterclockwise until a meter fills up or let go of the mouse button at a specific time. Those three things are the gist of it, which means you likely already know if Crushed in Time will be an accessibility problem for you or not. As far as I can tell, there are no options available to help players who have trouble with the mouse-only gameplay loop, which is hugely disappointing. I eventually couldn’t continue playing because pinpoint accuracy was required, and my disability just wouldn’t allow it.

To its credit, Crushed in Time allows players to view increasingly detailed hints at nearly any time about what to do next to progress. These hints range from subtle to bluntly spelling everything out for you. Puzzle games that offer that much help to players (like me) who need it always earn a huge point in my favor. The fact that viewing these hints is entirely optional and that you can decide exactly how much help you need from them is great. On top of that, dialogue spoken by the characters themselves also frequently provides hints.

The issue here is that the longer you take to solve the current puzzle, the more you’ll have to hear the characters repeat those same lines. Even though I quite like the voice acting, all that repetition becomes grating quickly. To get back to the story, you’ll first have to connect a wire to a telephone in Sherlock’s office and then interact with said telephone so it rings and wakes him up. Then, you’ll have to move Sherlock’s chair out of the way, grab the key to his office door, and drag said key to the door to let Watson in.

When Watson attempts to show Holmes the letter he received, the letter inexplicably flies upwards and gets stuck to the ceiling. After you perform a series of contrived (albeit funny) things to get the letter down, the two read it and discover it’s a love letter addressed to Dr. Watson from someone named Emma. The thing is, Dr. Watson doesn’t know anyone named Emma, much less someone so clearly in love with him. In a mix of skepticism and confusion, the two set off toward the return address on the letter in order to figure out what’s going on here.

You’ll find that Crushed in Time often toys with the idea of breaking the fourth wall, even early on. However, there’s a specific point shortly after the two depart from their office where Crushed in Time abruptly stops pretending to restrain itself and fully leans into its obvious desire to shatter the fourth wall. You’ll see Crushed in Time’s logo suspended in midair, and you’ll have to click and snap it with the mouse until it falls and becomes a roadblock. It lands upside down, and Sherlock confidently (and incorrectly) concludes it must be a warning written in Latin.

That basically sums up the dynamic between the two within Crushed in Time: Holmes is so undeservedly self-confident that he believes all his absurd “deductions” must be correct. Watson, though ostensibly more intelligent than Holmes because he has at least one doctorate, is usually oblivious to what’s actually happening. These traits are mainly shown in how Holmes and Watson react to the actions of the player, such as when you click and snap them with the mouse to get them to move elsewhere. They always assume either that the other is at fault or that supernatural forces are haunting them.

Much of the humor within Crushed in Time relies on those particular traits of the duo. Thus, how you feel about the characters’ actions and personalities will likely make or break the humor of Crushed in Time for you. Since Crushed in Time relies so heavily on its sense of humor, this alone may ultimately dictate whether or not you’ll enjoy playing Crushed in Time. Without wishing to spoil anything, there’s also the fact that later in the campaign, Sherlock and Watson wind up in increasingly early beta versions of the game, which they see as different versions of reality itself.

The story hinges on the need to revert to earlier versions of Crushed in Time in order to fix bugs and address other problems before the final game launches in its equivalent of the real world. Remember that point I mentioned where the lack of accessibility options forced me to stop playing? During that part, you overhear the developers of Crushed in Time talking to each other about how burned out they are and the looming threat of executives firing them all to replace them with AI. Now I’m sure you see why I so heavily emphasized Crushed in Time’s destruction of the fourth wall.

The fact that its story and much of its sense of humor rely on those concepts is likely the biggest thing you should consider regarding Crushed in Time. That is, unless you think its core gameplay loop and control scheme will present accessibility issues for you; though not universal, that’s a much more important factor. I enjoyed Crushed in Time before it abruptly became inaccessible for me. I also have to give Crushed in Time tons of credit for its hint system. Even so, however, considering its complete lack of accessibility options and its $25 base price, I cannot fully recommend it.

A PC review copy of Crushed In Time was provided by Draw Me a Pixel for this review.

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Crushed in Time

$24.99

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Enjoyably absurd humor.
• Great voice acting.
• The more “meta” parts of the story are interesting.
• Massively helpful optional hint system.

Cons

• No accessibility options whatsoever.
• Mouse-only control scheme that can become untenable without accessibility options.
• Repetitive core gameplay loop and spoken dialogue.