No Time To Explain is the very first game created by tinyBuildGAMES, a small indie studio with only a short Newgrounds pre-relase demo of this very game and available at GamersGate. Others may have heard of them from the very large amount of funding they received through Kickstarter donations, through which they received over three times their requested amount, and, in the end, the money I and many other contributors donated did not go to waste.

No Time To Explain is a pretty creative game. It starts with the main character performing some sort of “dance” (which involved little more than raising his hands in the air and wiggly) until himself, from the future, bursts through his own wall informing him that “there’s no time to explain!” before getting dragged off by a giant enemy crab and screaming in agonizing pain. Fortunately, future you drops his weapon, a laser cannon with such force that it’s able to push you backwards... or maybe even into the air.

Now, for a game revolving around the use of a gigantic laser cannon, aside from a small handful of stages, you’ll rarely use it to actually shoot anything. Despite the cannon, No Time To Explain is a platformer, and a very difficult one at that. Using the fact that the cannon has so much force it pushes you off the ground, you have to navigate through levels avoiding spikes and bottomless pits.

During these levels you’ll be thankful for No Time To Explain’s forgiving death system, which respawns you at the last safe piece of ground you touched, no matter where it is. Unfortunately, later in the game, not only does this become a godsend, but it also becomes the game’s main crux. You see, during boss battles, you’ll respawn exactly where you died. This sounds awful, until you bring in the fact that you have unlimited respawns, which means that all of the game’s boss battles are just tests of making the cannon’s beam follow the boss, getting hit a few times, and continuing to fire. This system turns potentially exciting boss battles into dragged on events that, with the current respawn system, serve no point in the game other than leading into the next stage.