Wakefield, Oct 2023
My knowledge of classic 80s movies is clearly lacking, because it took me quite a few months after hearing of Outatime before I realised it’s inspired by Back To The Future.
As you’d expect from a time travel theme, this is a game that spans different settings. There are of course a great many nods to the movie, some subtle and some blatant, though I’d say that the majority of this game focuses on the movie’s setting more than on the movie’s plot. The premise here is that you’re lost in time and need to find the parts of the flux capacitor so as to travel back to your own time; and the greater part of the game focuses on exploration of those time periods.
Outatime uses plenty of padlocks (though not exclusively); it’s a game based around finding codes of various types. It’s also colourful and bouncy and larger than life, helped by the period theming and the use of music. And where it does use the BTTF theming, it leans into it in a way that feels fairly seamless and should give a buzz to all fans of the movie.
But even if you’ve somehow never heard of Marty McFly, you could play this room and have a blast; it is first and foremost a puzzle room, full of clever and well designed puzzles, some designed to exercise your brain and some just to delight. This is a cheerful, fun game that captures the upbeat energy of its inspiration. 
