Time Hollow

Time Hollow is a graphic adventure game, in which the player controls protagonist Ethan Kairos as he attempts to find his missing parents. Using the "Hollow Pen", he is able to open circular portals into the past after he has experienced a "flashback" of a certain location. By opening portals into different areas, he is able to recover or place items and people, as well as observe the past. Although time stops while a portal is open, certain characters are able to interact with Ethan.

The player must draw these portals with the stylus, and once the portal is closed, a certain amount of "Time" is lost, equivalent to HP. Portions of Time equivalent to one portal, called "Chrons", can be recovered by finding Ethan's cat, Sox, in the game world. The game is supplemented by animated cut scenes showing important events and flashbacks. Backgrounds are static, and layered to provide a 3D perspective effect when they are moved from side to side.

Time Hollow follows the story of Ethan Kairos, whose parents, Timothy and Pamela Kairos, mysteriously disappear on his 17th birthday. Ethan realizes that the entire world has changed as if his parents had disappeared 12 years ago. Ethan then finds a strange green pen with the ability to open portals to the past and a note tied to his cats collar telling him to look in a dumpster behind his school, there he finds a note from his father. Ethan uses the pen to solve problems that suddenly and mysteriously occur, thus changing the present, though he himself is able to remember these past parallel universes.

He also meets a girl, Kori Twelves, who seems to share Ethan's displacement from time. Eventually, Ethan comes to realize that the past is being manipulated by another Hollow Pen wielder, Irving Onegin, as revenge for the fact that Ethan supposedly killed his mother. After a final confrontation, Irving steps through his own portal, taking the identity of Ethan's teacher in order to exact his plan. After thwarting a series of determined attempts to murder his friends by Irving, he saves his parents from a restaurant explosion that caused their disappearance.

Time Hollow received "mixed" reviews according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. GameSpot praised its "great concept" and "vivid artwork", but thought that the gameplay was "overly simple" and "restrictively linear," with "very little for you to figure out for yourself." IGN commended the plot, but complained that "only a handful of characters are interesting enough to care about." In Japan, Famitsu gave the game a score of all four eights for a total of 32 out of 40.

The main theme song of the game was composed and arranged by Masanori Akita, and also appeared on the Japanese PlayStation 2 version of Dance Dance Revolution SuperNova 2, the Arcade and North American PlayStation 2 version of Dance Dance Revolution X.