Game info · from the Steam page and official screenshots

Grand Theft Timeline gameplay: worlds, theme packs and captures

What do you actually do in Grand Theft Timeline?

The store describes one loop, and the screenshots show each step of it Steam:

1. Set the destination and pull the lever. The cockpit screen reads, for example, “DEST SET: SUBURBIA · 2009 — PULL THE LEVER”, then “IN TRANSIT”.
2. Rob the world. Steal its valuables (one screenshot shows a player carrying the Mona Lisa in Florence, 1503, with the prompt “get back to the machine”) and sell them for cash.
3. Capture people. Knock NPCs down and drag them back in cages. There are 2,000+ of them, and every world has a boss you can kill or cage.
4. Get back before it leaves. “The machine leaves with whoever’s inside.” Miss it and you arrive decades older, or as a baby. The HUD shows a “JUMP WINDOW” bar in most world screenshots.
5. Spend at home. Feed the captures in your garage zoo for paradox, upgrade the time machine, buy guns, expand the garage, then jump again.

On the way you can throw whatever is lying around, ride mounts “while your friends shoot from the back”, and fight crowds: the store promises “100 one-hit-mummies coming for you at once”. Steam’s player tags for the game read like this list: Time Travel, Creature Collector, Dungeon Crawler, Heist, Physics, Comedy and Loot.

How many worlds and theme packs are there?

The store promises 200+ worlds in 25+ theme packs, “Real history and pure fiction on one time machine, from the dinosaurs to Squid Game”, and calls the core game “complete and fully playable” for Early Access Steam. You can play a pack “like a story, world by world, all the way to its finale”.

The clearest look at the structure is the “Pick Your Timeline” menu in one official screenshot. Each pack card offers Campaign (new or ongoing) and One Night, a run that records your best, for example “ONE NIGHT BEST: WORLD 1 OF 7”. The menu also mentions save slots (“new save in slot 20”). These are the 18 packs visible on that screen, with world and species counts where the card shows them:

• Grand Theft Timeline128 worlds · ~15 species eachEvery world on one dial, the whole timeline at once. 10 campaigns.
• The American Road Trip6 worlds · ~18 species eachCoast to coast and across the years, from a gunfight at high noon on.
• The Arcade Pack8 worlds · ~16 species eachThe history of the arcade in one run, from the first alien invasion in 1978.
• The Block Pack13 worlds · ~13 species eachThe block game, from the first day on the surface through the village. 3 campaigns.
• The Bookshelf6 worlds · ~16 species eachThe great old books, walked into one after another.
• The Cryptid Road Trip7 worlds · ~17 species eachOne crew, one van, every monster they said wasn’t real, from Bigfoot on.
• The Deep Sea Pack7 worlds · ~15 species eachDown and down: the pirates’ cove, the Triangle where the planes vanish.
• The End of the World6 worlds · ~17 species eachEvery way it could all go wrong, one after another, from the millennium bug.
• The Fairy Tale Pack7 worlds · ~16 species eachA bedtime story that won’t stop: a child’s crayon drawing comes alive. 1 campaign.
• The Fantasy Pack6 worlds · ~16 species eachRoll for initiative: the torch-lit dungeon, the hero’s temples.
• The Future Pack6 worlds · ~16 species eachTomorrow, then the day after, then the end. 1 campaign.
• The Glitch Pack6 worlds · ~17 species eachThe timeline coming apart one layer at a time, from the unfinished grey-box build.
• The Halloween Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen; worlds include The Ghost Manor.
• The Heist Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen; worlds include The Louvre and The Knights Templar.
• The History Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen; worlds include The Great Pyramid and The Colosseum.
• The Iconic Games Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen. 1 campaign.
• The Internet Horror Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen; a tile reads “Inside the Backrooms”.
• The Jump Packcounts not visible on screenName only on screen; worlds include The Water Level. 1 campaign.

“Species” appears to mean the kinds of NPC you can capture in each world. The first pack, Grand Theft Timeline itself, puts 128 worlds on one dial; the others are themed runs of 6 to 13 worlds. The list stops where the screenshot is cut off, so the remaining packs (the store says 25+) are not named yet. Whether worlds are hand-built or generated, a question asked on the Steam forum, has no answer from the developer yet; the store calls one trailer “Authored Worlds Trailer (Non Modded)”, which suggests the base worlds are built by the studio.

Worlds named on screen in the official screenshots include the Cretaceous (66M BC), Egypt (1323 BC), the Renaissance (1266), Florence (1503), Salem on witching night (1692), Frankenstein’s lab in Ingolstadt (1818), a ghost manor on a stormy night (1901), the RMS Titanic (1912), Berlin (1945), Barnaby’s Pizza Jamboree after hours (1987), a toy factory closed since 1995, Suburbia (2009), Squid Game’s Game 1 (2021), New York on 11 September 2001, Area 51 and Neo-Port 7 (2177).

How do captures, cages and paradox work?

Captures are the core of the game: “Kidnap people across 200+ worlds of history & fiction, haul them home in cages and farm paradox in your garage” Steam. At home they live in cages and “drip PARADOX”. You vacuum it up, feed them, and “watch them get fat and make paradox to fuel your machine”. The garage has limited space, so expanding it to hold more captures is how you “get further in the timeline”.

Exact rates (how much paradox a capture makes, what a jump costs) are not published and the playtest bans public videos, so nobody outside it has shown them. This page will add them after release.

What is the Timeline Arena?

“Your captures fight in a Roman colosseum to unlock the next worlds” Steam. The arena console in one screenshot spells out how a fight starts:

In the middle: “Load both pens”, then “Ring the bell”. So a fight is two caged captures, one per corner, with an optional bet on the result. Another screenshot shows the colosseum at night under fireworks.

Bosses, guns, stocks and skins

• Bosses: “A boss in every world”. Unlock the map to it, then kill it, or cage it and take it home. One screenshot labels a boss “Maestro Barnaby LVL 100 Boss” in Barnaby’s Pizza Jamboree, 1987 Steam.
• Guns and special weapons: “Every world has its own special weapons to find”, and you buy new guns between trips.
• Valuables: each world’s treasures, sold for cash.
• Stocks: “Gamble the crew’s cash on stocks”, including one called DEFINITELY NOT A RUG.
• Skins and pets: outfits and gun skins from the worlds you rob, and captures shrunk into pets.
• Mods: community worlds from the Steam Workshop and a mod kit in the game. See mods and Workshop.

For how many people can join and what happens to a friend left behind, see co-op and multiplayer.

Why are there worlds like 9/11 and Berlin 1945?

The game treats real history, including its worst days, as heist locations. The store says outright “And yes, you can shoot Hitler” Steam, a screenshot shows a Berlin 1945 “Last Defense” room, and two screenshots show a world labelled “9/11 2001 / New York”: an office with a plane outside the window, and a briefing board reading “Unscheduled briefing, today, 09/11/2001”. This is the “WTC” world people search for.

Players are split. One asked the developer not to censor anything and said the 9/11 trailer sold them on the game; the developer answered that such content, “and much more cancelled things”, are coming, and that a WW2 bunker is “probably” on the way Developer. Another player called the 9/11 world insane and hoped survivors’ families would not play it. If this kind of content is a problem for you, know that it is part of the base game, not a mod.

Grand Theft Timeline trailers

The developer’s YouTube channel (REAL PLAYERS) has two trailers for the game, both music only, without narration Official:

• Official Announcement Trailer, 9 July 2026, about one minute.
• GTA 6 Release Day Reveal Trailer, 22 October 2026, about two minutes.

The Steam page carries two more videos, “Authored Worlds Trailer (Non Modded)” and “Modded Trailer”. Several channels re-upload these trailers under their own names; the links above are the developer’s originals. No gameplay walkthrough exists yet, because playtesters may not post videos.