Editing Time loop (section)

==As a puzzle==
Stories with time loops commonly center on the character learning from each successive loop through time.<ref name="sfencyclopedia" /> Jeremy Douglass, [[Janet Murray]], [[Noah Falstein]] and others compare time loops with video games and other interactive media, where a character in a loop learns about their environment more and more with each passing loop, and the loop ends with complete mastery of the character's environment.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Douglass |first1=Jeremy |title=Command Lines: Aesthetics and Technique in Interactive Fiction and New Media |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jvfsQ5G9S7MC |date=2007 |publisher=University of California, Santa Barbara |location=Santa Barbara, Cal. |isbn=978-0549363354 |pages=333–335, 358 |access-date=29 November 2015 }}{{Dead link|date=November 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> Shaila Garcia-Catalán et al. provide a similar analysis, saying that the usual way for the protagonist out of a time loop is acquiring knowledge, using retained memories to progress and eventually exit the loop. The time loop is then a problem-solving process, and the narrative becomes akin to an interactive puzzle.<ref>{{cite book |last1=García-Catalán |first1=Shaila |last2=Navarro-Remesal |first2=Victor |year=2015 |chapter=Try Again: The Time Loop as a Problem-Solving Process in ''Save the Date'' and ''Source Code'' |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kc57BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA206 |editor1=Matthew Jones |editor2=Joan Ormrod |title=Time Travel in Popular Media: Essays on Film, Television, Literature and Video Games |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kc57BwAAQBAJ |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers |pages=206–209 |isbn=9781476620084 |oclc=908600039}}</ref>

The presentation of a time loop as a puzzle has subsequently led to video games that are centered on the time loop mechanic, giving the player the ability to learn and figure out the rules themselves. Games like ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask]]'', ''[[Minit (video game)|Minit]]'', ''[[The Sexy Brutale]]'', ''[[Outer Wilds]]'', ''[[12 Minutes]]'', ''[[Returnal (video game)|Returnal]]'' and ''[[Deathloop]]'' were all designed to allow the player to figure out the loop's sequences of events and then navigate their character through a loop a final time to successfully complete the game. According to Raul Rubio, the CEO of Tequila Works that created ''The Sexy Brutale'', "Time loops allow players to train to get better at the game, faster, smarter, by experimenting from a fixed starting situation, and seeing what it works to move 'forward' within the loop and adding something else to that structure to build a solid process."<ref>{{cite web | url = https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-07-31-time-loop-games | title = Learn, reset, repeat: The intricacy of time loop games | first = James | last = Batchelor | date = 31 July 2019 | access-date = 31 July 2019 | work = [[GamesIndustry.biz]] }}</ref>