Thank you for playing! I'm sorry you didn't figured it out, I don't know where you stopped, but it's very short until you get the time gun!
Viewing post in Not This Time jam comments
To pass this, you need to understand that time goes faster when you go through the purple spheres.
The door in front of you will open as soon as you step on the pressure plate, but when you leave it to reach the door, a countdown starts.
Going through the purple sphere makes the time go too fast and you can't reach the door in time, but you actually have another route on the side, that appears to be longer but stays at normal timescale so it takes less time to traverse it.
It's worth giving it another try in my opinion, the game has several surprises after that are creative and cool.
ah, thanks! I had suspected that going the longer route was the way to do it, but I hadn't realized that the door timer starts when you step on the button, not when you step off. Makes sense.
I assume the blue and purple spheres at the beginning are to demonstrate how they affect time, but that didn't click for me (because I never stopped and looked). The section after the door, with the pusher gun things, worked a lot better at demonstrating that for me (probably because they force you to stop and look at how the sphere is affecting time). Maybe having that be the first challenge in the game could help people understand how the game works a bit earlier.
Anyway, agreed with the other commenters about checkpoints being necessary, especially with the moving platform being so finicky. Much better game once you get to the time mechanic though, it's a super neat idea and makes for really interesting puzzles.