Killing Time

Studio 3DO, Logicware, Night Dive

images c/o Steam

If you were around in the 1990s and you liked FPS games, you had no shortage of weird shit to play. Contemporary commentary often lamented the conformity, the follow-the-leader ethos, of fly-by-night outfits chasing those Doom and Quake dollars. And true, there's a lot of games from the era that were mediocre also-rans with nothing to differentiate them from the big boys. But it was also a time of great experimentation, especially as console hardware grew beyond the capabilities of the 16-bit era into the realm of CD-ROMs and full motion video. While the Panasonic 3DO was by all rights a failure, there was a lot of promise to it, being one of the earliest CD-ROM-based consoles, which made it a testing ground of sorts for new ideas. (Really, what killed the 3DO was the hefty price tag: we may talk shit about $500 for the PlayStation 5, but the 3DO's initial price of $700 in the early 90s — equivalent to nearly $1600 today —  kept it out of all but the wealthiest, or at least most tech-enthusiastic, homes.) I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the 3DO walked so that the PlayStation could run. Despite its inaccessible price, it boasted a pretty decent library: ports of FMV games like Night Trap and Myst, what in my opinion is the best version of Alone in the Dark, the original version of the cult horror hit D, and some decent exclusives like the 3DO version of Demolition Man (in this case a light gun shooter) and Jurassic Park Interactive. Look, it's not all like the Doom port. Anyway, one interesting facet of the 3DO is that it played host to not one but two different horror-themed FPS games. One of them was Escape from Monster Manor, developed by Studio 3DO early in the platform's lifetime and promising some decent scares in spite of a primitive engine more in line with Wolfenstein 3D. Studio 3DO would revisit the concept a couple years later with Killing Time, a more successful outing that has developed a cult following in the three decades since.

Killing Time's plot goes something like this: you play a student or possibly colleague of an old archaeologist who used to go on digs in Egypt in the 1930s, and he talks a lot about Tess Conway, a wealthy socialite obsessed with the occult (especially Egyptian mythology) who disappeared along with everyone in attendance at a party she held on the summer solstice in 1932. The private island upon which her manor resides has been silent ever since, and you've determined to figure out what happened. You've brought a gun, just in case...

It's easy to see why Killing Time remains a cult classic: in a field awash in also-rans, Killing Time dared to do something different, blending a sharp, unified aesthetic with the at the time very original storytelling method of placing ghostly FMV scenes, starring real actors, around the game that played in realtime without interrupting gameplay. I love it when games use digitized actors — it's one of those things that embodied the heady, experimental period of the 90s, when the technology had gotten to the point that you could get your dorky friends to wear some costumes and film them, then scan the VHS to turn them into sprites. Mortal Kombat did it. Rise of the Triad did it. Area 51 did it. And so did Killing Time: aside from spectral live action scenes, the enemies were all real people in costumes, digitized into sprites, as was the sprites of the player holding weapons.

The 3DO version of Killing Time, despite this rather brilliant innovation in FPS storytelling at a time when most FPS games were like "here's a gun, go shoot things," was nonetheless pretty primitive, and even high-resolution sprites and textures couldn't hide how much of Wolfenstein 3D was in the game's design ethos: labyrinthine maps with no real connection to any sort of place a human might want to live. However, the game was later ported to PC (including the Power Mac) by Logicware, with none other than Rebecca "Burger Becky" Heineman in the crew. Aside from using a modified version of the Jaguar Doom engine (thereby making the game technically an idTech1 game) to power the game, it also boasted a redone game world, complete with a greatly expanded manor grounds. The interior of the mansion has been less extensively modified, but still recognizably different. Other than the ghostly FMVs (in much lower resolution) the digitized actors have all been replaced with lower-quality 3D models, though the bestiary was greatly expanded.

And then along came Night Dive. While Night Dive already has made a name for themselves in preserving and remastering the biggest, most well-known classics — Doom, Quake, System Shock 2, and so on — they've also tackled a lot of obscure titles of varying quality. While Killing Time probably isn't the most obscure game they've dusted off and fixed up, it's definitely up there. Killing Time Resurrected sort of brings the best of both worlds, combining the more popular (and better-designed) PC version with the higher quality assets of the 3DO version. This is the version I played. The options for the game's overall look are fairly granular, and I wound up going with 3DO sprites but PC textures, not least because the high-resolution textures are those uncanny-looking "neural net upscales" that I think look trashy at best. They also created bespoke new character sprites out of 3D models for the PC-exclusive monsters; while I wish they had tried to use digitized actors for a unified aesthetic, I understand why they didn't.

If you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know that this isn't the first time I've talked about Killing Time. I wrote up both of Mike "impie" MacDee's Killing Time-themed total conversions for GZDoom last year. While I wasn't so big on Kiss of the Scorpion (though I loved Mask of Sobek) it's clear that both were labors of love for a huge fan of the original game. Killing Time as it stands is quite the interesting artifact; its mood and palette often made the game feel like a goofier, almost safer version of Blood. Despite its horror theme, the game doesn't go out of its way to scare you. Its level design is, in a word, kind of weird. I had initially planned on doing a traditional map-by-map write up in the way I'd done with MacDee's mods, but as I played, I realized that Killing Time had a similar problem to Cold as Hell: there simply wasn't much to really distinguish one section from the other. The manor grounds all look alike; the mansion itself is composed of labyrinthine mazes with an art deco aesthetic. It made more sense to treat the game like a "metroidvania," approaching the map design as a singular unit. I think MacDee better understood the value of creating distinct sections of a hub with their own conceits; you'll get no such System Shock (or Bioshock!) design ethos from Killing Time.

And that's okay, really. What's there is nonetheless a lot of fun. You'll probably burn through it pretty quick; there's an achievement for finishing the game under two hours. The only really bad part, in my view, is the finale: once you've found all of the vessels used in the ritual trapping the island in time, it unleashes the game's penultimate boss, an immortal monster who chases you all over the island as you try to destroy six Egyptian water clocks stored in towers at the corners of the mansion. I'm not particularly a fan of this kind of gameplay mechanic. The actual final boss itself is also somewhat disappointing, possessed of an abundance of health and hitting pretty hard for a game that generally will not make you sweat much up to this point, but you can make short work of it with a fully loaded flamethrower.

Killing Time Resurrected actually has some modding capability. The game maps are built in UDMF format, making it a snap to design new levels in Doom Builder with the provided modding SDK. I would certainly not mind seeing a remake of the original game world, giving the maps more character while also stripping out some of the more maze-like aspects to create a more realistic space.

And if you're one of those people with nostalgia for the 3DO version fret not: a port of the 3DO maps is forthcoming, though the last I heard, they've had some technical difficulties that have delayed release. Nonetheless, it's a thing, and it sounds like it will be out soon from this writing. So there's that.

I like Killing Time. While I think Blood more completely realizes the concept of a fun action horror FPS, Killing Time is an interesting predecessor with a vibe all its own. The FMV actors are all great, the music is some of the most entertaining jazz and ambient I've ever heard, and there's just something fun about mowing down hordes of creepy clowns. In short, it's a great way to... kill some time.

-june❤