Achron: An RTS for Weird Time Shit

[Frogwarrior]

I love this game:
www.achrongame.com
Basically, it's an RTS with time travel as a gameplay mechanic.
-> You can change the past to alter the outcome of a battle, or to retroactively prevent it from happening.
-> You can send the survivors of a battle into the past to help out their past selves.
-> You can distract your enemy or do some scouting with troops that soon will never have existed once the timeline corrects itself.
-> "Poor timeline management" can be a cause of death.

These are all things that mean something in this game. I recommend it; be forewarned that it will strain your brain.

[Portalboat]

Oh, yeah, that game! I've completely forgotten about this!

Maybe we can get a league up or something?

[Frogwarrior]

That would be pretty awesome.

I've been thinking that, when I get some time, I wanna tackle the multiplayer aspect and perhaps even do a sort of replay analysis thing like Day[9] does with Starcraft II, only not as awesome. It'd be cool to spend some time to get really good at a very unique game.

Mostly, though, I just want to send an army back in time, cancel the chronoport, attack my enemy with an army of time ghosts, then cackle in glee as he frantically micros against an army that will be completely erased when the next time wave rolls by.

[Portalboat]

I have a feeling that my head would explode if I tried this. I still wanna try though. If anyone buys a copy, would it be too much to ask for your friend code thing?

[Bratmon]

I'll try it IF AND ONLY IF it ever works on Linux.

[ARandomKid]

Dude I want this thing. I have no monies, though.

[weirdguy]

Can you explain to me how this doesn't turn into some sort of xanatos clusterfuck?

edit: oh, I get it now, eventually one of them is going to stop the other one from ever existing

[Frogwarrior]

Each player has a limited (refilling) ability to issue or delete commands in the past, and your interactions are limited to a time window of a few minutes. The further back in the past you try to operate, the more "chronoenergy" it spends to issue even a single command to a single unit (although, if that unit is a commander, it can automatically pass on orders to its underlings). This makes it harder to screw up the timeline by accident.

It is, however, entirely possible to cause paradoxes on purpose, and even to use them to confuse the enemy. I haven't figured out how to do that though.

I haven't checked it out, but there is a free demo available on their website.
http://www.achrongame.com/site/news.php
Says it has a couple tutorial levels to try out the mechanics, including a level where you fight a full-fledged achronal commander like yourself.
They also have a page explaining how gameplay works, if you want to know the mechanics of weird time shit and how to use it to ruin someone else's day. Some good demo videos in there too.
http://www.achrongame.com/site/gameplay.php

ETA: By the way, I feel obliged to add that the soundtrack is among the best of anything ever...

[Gilo000]

oooooooOOOOOOOoooooh. Time travel is neat and so is RTS. I have no idea how neat this is. I'll check it out when I get home.

[ARandomKid]

Tried the demo, and I really don't like how it is so difficult to differentiate between the smaller units. >_<

Also on their gameplay page thing they should really change that six to four, since you can't technically change anything further than four minutes back. /nitpicking

[Frogwarrior]

The amount of the timeline that is visible varies; map-makers get to choose that sort of thing. One of the sandbox levels only has a total window of a couple minutes.

Also, don't forget that you can zoom in and out with the mouse scroll wheel.


anyway, playing this game a lot MIGHT just make you a little bit more terrible at other things... I've started to find myself making small mistakes and thinking "oh no big deal, I'll just go back in time and change it... crap, time travel still isn't real."

[ARandomKid]

I was zoomed in all the way, but I didn't know about the variable time-changing setting. Okay then that's cool now.

[wait]

Yearghhhh, I really wanted to play this. Even just thinking about the mechanics gets my head into the same weirdly profound state of mind that some parts of Homestuck do.

I could see myself in the future, as clear as day, and I was enjoying the fuck out of this game. So I snapped myself back to the past to buy it, in order to ensure that this future would come to be. But something went wrong.

I must have done something to splinter myself off into a doomed timeline or something, because I got the game, met the requirements and everything, but it just wouldn't work. I could never get past the main menu without the loading screen freezing on me. This is complete bullshit.

[sporb]

Wow this game looks so mindfucklingly awesome, I must have it.