Schlocktober '24: Killing Time Resurrected isn't scary or objectively a good game, but I couldn't stop playing it.

Schlocktober '24: When spooky season comes around I start looking for (mostly) mediocre games to satisfy my urge for gore and chills. Some are horror, some are just horror influenced, most are deeply flawed and a little obscure, but as long as they've got spooks and shivers, games of all shapes and sizes can be part of Schlocktober. Games were played, or at least started in October.

Killing Time Resurrected is a Nightdive Studios remaster of a very old and deeply flawed game, or pair of games, depending on how you look at it. The original Killing Time was a 3DO release in the infancy of the first person shooter, coming in 1995 just a couple years after the release of Doom, and representing one of the earliest console-focused FPS games ever made, and certainly one of the most complex ones made at the time. It was an innovative story-based game that had the player exploring a cursed island trapped in perpetual 1932 and infested with undead monsters ranging from disembodied spirit heads to evil zombie clowns. The story sequences were presented as in-world ghostly FMV performances by Broadway actors and unraveled the mystery of how and why the island became cursed and what the inhabitants were doing prior to the supernatural catastrophe that befell them. Gameplay was somewhat rudimentary, with the player crawling through Wolfenstein style hallways and shooting it out with basic enemies with virtually no AI, but the digitized sprites gave it a unique and detailed look and the excellent music and sound elevated helped elevate the experience to a campy but still atmospheric good time. It became something of a hidden gem in the 3DO library, held back by its technical issues and low framerate but beloved by a subset of the already small 3DO audience.

In 1996 a PC version was released, with the same story and themes of the 3DO version, but a brand new interconnected open world map that now had real differentiated areas to explore and greatly expanded 3D elements, more akin to a Build engine game like Duke Nukem 3D than Wolfenstein. Unfortunately, it also replaced the FMV sprites of the enemies with CG versions that lacked anywhere near the same level of charm and made some other changes that fans did not appreciate. Players were left with the choice between the more atmospheric 3DO version or the better playing and laid out PC version, and most ended up choosing neither, leaving it firmly in cult classic territory. I was one of those people who was vaguely aware of the game but didn’t play it, since I never owned a 3DO and the PC FPS market of 1996 was already saturated, with both Duke Nukem 3D and Quake arriving that year, both leaving indelible marks on the genre.

The 2024 version of the game combines and enhances elements of both the 3DO and PC versions and remixes them into something not quite like either. It takes the PC version’s map and other enhancements but pulls the sprites and some other elements from the 3DO version (though some PC versions are also enhanced and mixed in as well for good measure), greatly upscaling all assets with both remastering from the original live action photography and a mix of AI and hand upscaling and enhancement of some assets. The result looks absolutely gorgeous, still clearly something left over from the mid 90s but accomplishing far more than a pure resolution enhancement could and capturing the way we thought games looked back then, even though none had this level of fidelity or detail. The in game FMV sequences have held up remarkably well, with acting that’s campy and stagey but of a far higher quality than most video game acting was at the time, more resembling a good student film with professional actors than the “Jim from accounting reads a few lines in a $30 Halloween costume” stuff we were used to back then. The fact that these are mid 90s actors playing characters from the 1930s also creates even more of an eerie, out of time, feeling,

The set up for Killing Time is that you’re an Egyptologist looking for a water clock that you’ve tracked to an island once owned by Tess Conway, an eccentric heiress who disappeared, along with all her friends and employees, in 1932. The game itself takes place at an unspecified time after that, though for some reason it feels more like it takes place in the 1940s than the 1990s, even though it could be either (since for practical purposes you spend the game on the time-frozen island.) You won’t be surprised to learn that when you step off your small boat on to the island it is not empty at all, but rather inhabited by cursed versions of the prior residents, both man and beast. Tess Conway appears in ghostly form and asks you to help free her from the island’s curse, and you’re off on your adventure, exploring to discover what went wrong and how it can be made right again.

It's hard to call Killing Time: Resurrected a “good” game. Even accounting for the fact that it’s close to 30 years old it has a lot of deep flaws. The PC version level design is cool for having recognizable locations and a real sense of place, but as a game map it’s supremely frustrating, being essentially a series of interlocking mazes with seemingly countless dead ends. The enemy designs are charming, ranging from prohibition gangsters and the aforementioned clowns to evil ducks who just quack at you, along with cockroaches, sentient dung balls, and angry chambermaids, but pretty much all of them just beeline for you, some throwing projectiles. The most dangerous enemies in the game are the two-headed dogs, which are exclusively found in outside areas and charge quickly at you, closing the distance fast and causing massive damage, but because you spend most of the later game in the island’s main structure, the manor house, they’re mostly an early game threat.

Weapon variety is downright bad. You start out with a revolver, then get dual wielded revolvers, but quickly find a Tommygun that uses the same ammo and never use either again. There’s also a shotgun, probably the most effective weapon in the game, a flamethrower that chews through ammo and can burn you too but is useful in a pinch, and then a couple melee weapons, Molotov cocktails, and an Ankh that acts as the game’s version of the BFG. Neither weapon nor enemy design even reaches the level of complexity and balance of Doom, which at that point was a couple years old and had set the conventions for the genre. Enemy and ammunition placement feels almost random at times, each weapon can be found in half a dozen locations but there’s no benefit to finding multiple copies since you can’t respawn (you load a save when you die instead) so a lot of times you’ll find a hidden path that just leads to yet another flamethrower, which has no real value other than ammo. Sometimes you’ll find a health pickup, which can be good, but not particularly rewarding because random enemies drop them too (along with damaging health power downs, like the FPS version of real Super Mario Bros. 2’s poison mushrooms) along with ammo. There are some true power ups that grant you things like extra damage or armor or temporary health above your maximum, but I often found them after I’d cleared an area out when they were pretty useless, most of them being time limited. Most of the game is spent collecting “winged essences” containing Tess's spirit energy, and those each come with a power up you keep in your inventory and can use whenever you want, but the game’s easy enough that I just forgot about them and never used any. The level design feels more grounded in reality, but is less creative and mechanically interesting than Doom. Considering that we were already seeing titles like System Shock in 1994, Killing Time would have felt somewhat archaic even in ‘95.

On the other hand what the game lacks in design chops it makes up for in charm. The game integrated FMV works shockingly well as a storytelling technique, with its theater actor cast able to use the full extent of their bodies and facial expressions to produce performances with more nuance than even many of today’s big budget motion capped games. The soundtrack ranges from spooky to lively and upbeat. The enemy designs are amusing and can be a little creepy, and it all comes together to give a unique cohesive feeling of the game world really being this uncanny place you’re exploring and learning the secrets of. One of the best sequences in the game involves a hedge maze, where the ghostly apparition of a small girl gives you clues to which door to go through next, and you make your way through the twisting corridors killing zombie gardeners and solving riddles. This is arguably the only true set of puzzles in the game, with everything else amounting to key and switch hunts, but there are many games, even good games, that don’t have a sequence that’s nearly as impactful.

I have to admit that I found Killing Time: Resurrected enthralling, and for reasons I can’t fully articulate. There was something about the uncanniness of exploring this dark island full of weird high res sprites and meaningless cul-de-sacs that drew me in and would not release me. I got lost quite a lot during my playthrough, partially because of the game’s terrible minimap, and spent a very long period wandering around because I didn’t realize how to access the second floor of the mansion due to the game’s flat pseudo-3D perspective hiding the stairs. But there was something very relaxing about backtracking through areas I’d cleared of enemies and exploring the darkened grounds of the island. Sometimes I’d find a hidden cave or something else with a few enemies to kill, and while it rarely led to anything useful it was still exciting to find some new hidden pathway, a few of which were even necessary to progress the game.

Something about the simplicity of the combat, with few weapons, all of which require the same strategies to use, and simplistic enemy behavior made the whole experience non-stressful, while the cool locations and fun FMV sequences rewarded me for continuing on the quest. The fidelity of the restoration also means that there’s nothing else that feels quite like Killing Time Resurrected, no other game that uses photo assets and FMV in quite the same way at the same fidelity. It doesn’t just feel like playing a 1995 game, it feels like playing a 1995 game did in 1995, when the technical limitations weren’t as apparent as they would be today for the original versions.

One fly in the ointment when it comes to the game is the ending sequence. After you collect all the Winged Vessels you open an area where you encounter Duncan, Tess Conway’s one time lover and patsy, who has been transformed into a monstrous avatar of the ancient Egyptian god Seth. He then pursues you relentlessly through the mansion, as you go to some previously sealed doors to destroy the devices keeping him immortal. Having this teleporting monster who respawns almost instantly after death pursue you through a maze as you backtrack and try to remember where the doors were is not scary or intense so much as it is frustrating and annoying, and I will admit I looked up the general locations of the long-forgotten doors just to finish the sequence and move on to the end. It really takes away from the chill, relaxing, vibes and it is a supremely 1995 game design, even if it does in some way predict Resident Evil’s nemesis a few years later. Just having him not able to teleport around behind you or being able to temporarily kill him and getting more than a few seconds reprieve before he respawns would make this a lot more bearable. As it is it’s very unpleasant, like trying to find your way through a thickly wooded area while being chased by a hornet.

Objectively Killing Time isn’t a great game but subjectively I couldn’t put it down, and thought about it when I wasn’t playing it. After I finished it I immediately tried to think of another game that could provide the same kind of experience, because I was craving more, and even considered buying Nightdive’s remaster of P.O.’ed, another 3DO FPS, though I decided against it because that game has a far worse reputation and doesn’t have the elements like the FMV and the contiguous open world map that made Killing Time so compelling for me. There just isn’t anything really like this game, and while it’s neither objectively good nor scary, it made for a fantastic spooky-themed treat.

Schlocktober Rating: Surprisingly compelling old schlock. Killing Time is definitely schlock, but this version of it is fantastic to play, or at least was for me. Whether it was getting lost in infested sewers or clearing out rooms of tickling clowns I had a blast. The flaws and issues are numerous and clear but it's so effortless to just blast your way through that it's hard to stop. If this were candy it would be a limited time rerelease of an old, weird, flavor that you bought just to sample only to find yourself wolfing down the whole bag and craving more. They don't make them like this anymore, and they shouldn't, but that doesn't mean it's not worth tasting it for yourself.