Well hey that sounds quite interesting! Thanks for putting it on my radar =D

A Link Through Time?

Do you mean A Link To The Past?

???

The Zelda games I've played that feature time travel basically just have a 'past world' and 'future world'.

...

Using my original analogy.... So your 2D game is your screen.

The 3rd dimension would be into the screen, or toward your face.

A past/future flip is just two layers.

I'm trying to think of something thats more like... 10s, 100s, 1000s of 'layers', very fundamentally implemented as a basic game mechanic.

Like, you'd need to be weaving through time just as much as a normal game has you weaving through space, you'd have some puzzles or fights where you'd need to be moving through time and space simultaneously...

Apparently Braid is like this?

...

Majora's Mask is arguably the closest to this of any Zelda game, in that you csn functionally jump to many, many more than just two layers, tons and tons if events and npc like... world paths put them in different places at different exact times, you can Double Time song half a day into the future, unless you're doing some crazy speedrun you're probably gonna need to rewind the clock many times in a normal playthrough.

I'll have to check out Portal 2 w/ time travel though, haven't played that.

Eh, thats basically just hitting a time pause button.