The player navigates a series of time portals to locations such as ancient Egypt, Maya and the prehistoric Puebloan civilization, while solving puzzles and searching for clues to the archaeologist's whereabouts.

The Professor failed to complete the timegate connections with the genepods before attempting to access Atlantis, so he remains trapped until the player character can free him.

However, when the Professor is released back to Easter Island, the Timegate is destroyed, and a two-minute countdown begins, at the end of which Atlantis will launch into space.

"[1] She sought to build a superior game upon this foundation that drew from her fascination with archaeology, ancient cultures, science fiction and the myth of Atlantis.

[1][3] Obtaining permission from GTE Entertainment head Richard Robinson to start the project—on the condition that she work on it concurrently with her regular job at the company—Nichols approached artist Ed Deren to flesh out the idea and design a proof of concept demo.

[1] Timelapse remained in the prototyping stage for six months: Nichols and Deren collaborated with programmer Tim Bank to create part of the Egyptian world as their demo.

According to marketing manager Mike Yuen, the team worked extensively with focus groups while prototyping, both to refine Timelapse and to determine players' opinions on Myst and similar adventure titles.

At the time, GTE announced that South American, Asian, Japanese, European and British editions of the game were set to launch soon after the initial release.

According to GTE's Richard Scott, the parent company "made a strategic decision that it does not need to be a primary participant in the creation and management of content."

[9] The rights to Timelapse were obtained in February 1998 by the company Barracuda,[10] founded by Michael Kaye and Mike Yuen of the game's original team.

[10] Barracuda returned the game to store shelves in June, relaunched its official site in September and began selling it through online mail order in October.