This thing definitely talks about timelining, as the last achievement even says: "timeline erased - what never happened". So that must be an intentional loop. Grabbing all artifacts and being able to flee as you destroyed the (you call) overlord and the a-bomb gets deconstructed, so you are allowed to leave and flora/fauna re-rises.

That pilot in the overlord definitely looks like one of yours or even is you, giving the hint your race or yourself had been here before to start harvesting the planet with your robot army and your future you now wants to get rid of that plague and give nature back to itself. Why you would need to destroy that planet in the first place I have no clue, though. as you are entering the abomb yourself to deactivate it, and it had exploded before it means that the "cloudy sub-level" must be a time traveling hole to be able to move back in time. But also why do you get that hologram displayed on each stage? Is it a message from your race you are activating?

Also I have no clue what that simon says door at the end is for... the one in the background, as that blinking solution is never used anywhere.

Sadly it seems this game didn't quite get a bigger fanbase as there are only reviews, but not really any posts / story snippets...

Yeah, been a while since I looked at this game! The Square Diamond symbol was basically the symbol for your freedom, and was marked into like everything.

The hologram of the map at each point was instructions for the guy where to go to escape and beat the Overlord.

As for the Simon Says Match the Colors Puzzle, I think it's meant to unlock the 4th artifact challenge so you can get the final artifact.

I think the Puzzle itself, the design is meant to reflect your journey to escape the time loop and win your freedom. The outer ring symbolizes the time loop and the connected inner rings go in a certain clockwise order which is sort of how your player went from place to place and generally always to the right.

This was one of those tell a story not with words but by showing it. It was a pretty interesting game for what it was.

I think the square diamond is just a hint to the players. It means 'this is something you can interact with.'

At for story interpretation, there are a few things I think need to be considered.

First, this is pulp. The style of the ambiguously-human protagonist's suit with the bubble helmet. The ridiculously quaint robots with their arcing antenna. This is inspired by the glorious pulpy sci-fi days of the 50s and 60s, before such things became cliché. Killer robots and ray guns, and All-American Space Heroes rescuing damsels from many-clawed peril. So we should be interpreting the story in that light. Time travel, yes - but any kind of subtlety, no. Because this is drawing so heavily from the pulp era of sci-fi, that is the lens through which it should be viewed - the tropes, expectations and character archetypes of 50s science fiction.

In pulp, the bad guys are the Bad Guys. There's no shades of grey here, and with the unrestrained destruction the robot army unleashes, they are certainly Bad. So we know who the villains are here.

Now, those delightfully retro robots. There's a vital detail here, which you only see for a fraction of a second in the very last moments of the game. After you destroy the Big One, within it there is... a pilot seat. With a dead pilot. Which means these robots are actually just robots - there's someone who controls them.

The story is of a quest to reach a destination at the center of the planet - but it's not just your quest. It's the villain's too. While you follow the ancient trail towards the lift, they favor a brute force solution - you can see their mega-drill taking shape as you travel, until it penetrates the planet with the force of a nuclear bomb. So both you and they want to get to the center. They make it too, only to be defeated in the final confrontation. And what is at the center? The planet is hollow, but all we find is... a loop.

Now, that loop makes zero sense. For one, it defies obvious issues - the story starts on the surface, ends in the center, and the loop... how? No, this is just nonsense. Is there a deeper meaning here? Did the writer just think it'd be fun to copy Limbo? Equally unexplained is the protagonist's ability to shift the time of day via psychic brain glow - while somehow not affecting anything on the planet. But that, too, is pulp standard: Stories of the genre are always full of hand-waving. No-one cares how the rocket ship travels between stars or why the tentacular aliens wish to steal our scantily-clad women, so long as they look really, really cool while doing so.

I think the story is this: There isn't a clear story. It's a rambling, meaningless mess, and that... that's actually fine. This is not a narrative driven game: It's a low-to-medium difficulty puzzle platformer with a heavy emphasis on the art, and that art is stunningly beautiful. The story, such as it is, serves only one purpose: To give us a tour through the world.

Why is someone invading the planet with a robot army? Because they are the bad guy. That's what bad guys do. What is at the center of the planet? A McGuffin. Doesn't matter, so long as it's there to give characters motivation.

But, underneath all that, we actually find... the classic pulp story, stripped to the bare bones, as published a thousand times in a hundred magazines: It's the story of our protagonist, the Spaceman, who is compelled - perhaps willingly, perhaps not - to fight with the Evil Empire and their inhuman army. Our protagonist defeats the threat with the tools of the ideal hero of the 50s: Skill, intellect, bravery, grit. No charging in like a caveman - the modern hero fights with brains as much as brawn. The battle is long, but good (as always) emerges triumphant and the planet is saved.

If you want a similar game with a heavy story focus, try Planet of Lana.