The French studio Draw Me A Pixel has been around for a bit, and while it's only published one title, it sure was a quirky one. There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension made the point-and-click genre feel absurd, and it worked very well, especially for those who still love nonsensical ways to solve otherwise straightforward puzzles. For its sophomore effort, the team has gone back to the point-and-click well with Crushed in Time, another game that plays around with the genre's concept. We took a look at the demo that's set to be available for the upcoming Steam Next Fest.

The story starts with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the same versions seen in There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. Watson receives a letter from the postman, and while it is addressed to Holmes, it really is meant for Watson, as the letter describes how a woman misses the company of the good doctor. The problem is that Watson has no recollection of who this woman is, so the duo sets off on an adventure to see why this letter was sent.

The demo focuses squarely on Holmes and Watson, but there's an introductory modern narrative about a fledgling game studio that's scrambling to fix a character bug in its latest game. That intro appears to be set dressing. The characters are more of the bumbling sort, so the chances of you liking the game from the outset will depend on how you are with the characters being portrayed in a less flattering but humorous light. It's something to be aware of if you haven't played There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension yet.

As mentioned before, this is a point-and-click adventure game, and there are some hallmarks of the modern genre present. The interactive parts of the screen are amplified when you place your cursor over specific spots. The solutions to each puzzle vary wildly, from being sensible solutions to making no sense at all. If you've played any point-and-click adventure prior to this, you know exactly what to expect.

The big gimmick is the fact that you're stretching and snapping on objects in the environment instead of clicking on them. To dislodge a doorknob, for example, you'd pull on it and let go, so it snaps out of the door. If you wanted to move an object like a key, you could stretch and snap it while also angling it so that it flies in a certain direction. There's an elasticity to the world, making the whole thing feel more playful since the stretching provides a feeling of real-world interactivity, even if all you're doing is temporarily deforming parts of the screen.

While the system works fine once you come to grips with how it's supposed to work, it would've been nice if the demo showed off its functionality more. The sizzle reel at the end showed off things like using the snap function to propel a car forward, and that seems like a neat application of the mechanic. For what you see in the demo, there are flashes of distinct usage of the mechanic, such as flicking a chair out of the way, but there's also a good amount of stuff that could've been done with simple clicking, so the mechanic sometimes felt like a novelty.

One important thing to note with the controls is that if you're using a mouse, the stretch-and-snap system is absolutely fine. Dragging an item or piece of the environment and letting go of the mouse button feels intuitive, and you'll get the hang of the system in no time. However, if you're using a gamepad, the system feels unintuitive. You need to hold down a button and then move the left analog stick in the direction you want to pull, but instead of letting go of the button, you let go of the stick instead. It's backward compared to the mouse, and those who would want to play the game with a gamepad will find this to be a frustrating experience until the Steam Controller comes out.

It will be interesting to see if Crushed in Time can sustain the game's gimmick throughout the run of the game. The idea of stretching out things and snapping them into position is interesting, but the demo didn't give enough things to do to experiment with the concept for unexpected results. It's also not something for anyone who is planning to use a standard controller, since the control scheme is unintuitive. With a very stylized look and interesting story, there's enough in Crushed in Time for point-and-click fans to have some fun. We'll see if that holds true when the game releases later this year.