Argentine indie studio Whiteboard Games debuted Tempus Vitae at Gamescom 2026, and it might be the most inventive FPS concept of the show. The game’s central mechanic? A pistol that shoots backward in time to open locked doors. Time travel isn’t a layered-on gimmick — it is the lock-and-key design system that every metroidvania has used since Super Metroid.
One Space Station, Two Centuries
You play as Alex, a time-displaced astronaut who awakens on the space station Theia with no memory of how she arrived. Bodies are strewn across the floor. The station is at war. Her brother Adrian is missing. And someone has left her with technology that lets her jump 200 years into the future of the same physical space — and back.
The premise works because both eras are fully realized:
- 2185 — War-torn Theia: A battleground between rebel scientists and the authoritarian Lawkeepers. Active combat, soldiers, and political intrigue.
- 2385 — Post-apocalyptic Theia: The war is long over. The humans are long dead. What remains is a rusted ruin overrun by creatures of unknown origin.
Alex must understand not just what is happening in one era but what connects the two — and what in the past she can change to reshape the future.
Time as the Key: How Temporal Powers Replace Traditional Ability Gates
The core design insight is what separates Tempus Vitae from FPS games that add a time-rewind power as a novelty:
- Frozen time creates traversal paths through bullet mazes — stop the clock, walk between suspended projectiles
- The backward-firing pistol shoots a bullet that travels into the past, hitting targets that existed moments ago and opening doors that are sealed in the present
- Future jumps reveal corridors and structures that don’t exist yet in the present day, creating new routes through the same physical space
Every temporal power functions as the equivalent of a key, a double jump, or a morph ball — the classic metroidvania ability gates, but reimagined through time manipulation.
From Student Project to Commercial Release
Whiteboard Games was founded around 2019 when students at Buenos Aires’ Da Vinci School decided to keep working together after graduation. The studio name comes from the literal whiteboard they gathered around to pitch ideas.
Tempus Vitae is not a new idea — it is the studio’s oldest. The founding members built a time-travel prototype in 2019 and presented it at Bit Bang Fest in Argentina before pivoting to I See Red, a twin-stick shooter published with Gameforge in 2022. Now, with their first commercial game behind them, the studio has returned to the concept that started everything — rebuilt from scratch for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
What Should You Do?
- Wishlist Tempus Vitae on Steam
- Watch the gameplay trailer from Gamescom 2026
- Expect a 2027 release on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC