This summer’s divisive indie game 12 Minutes also centered around a repeating time loop, as have many other games, ranging from the star-charting Outer Wilds to the Nintendo 64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.

Deathloop’s time mechanic doesn’t quite work the way I would have wanted it to (more on why over in my review), but it sure offers a lot to talk about, like whether the game is actually a roguelite-like, and why time loop mechanics seemed to be hardcoded into the try, die, and try again format of most games.

We also go a little farther afield and talk about some of our favorite uses of time loop mechanics in other media like film, books, and manga.

Outer Wilds had a pretty good time loop of 22 minutes in real time.