Achron

It is true that some of the QoL of modern RTS are missing in achron but the time travel mechanic is fully fleshed out and have never played a more confuse and fun way to play rts. It is a shame that we don't have more games that playwith time as one of the mechanics, but this is a goldie. Getting confused only adds to the experience! Get it before you get out of time!

The game mechanics are novel enough to make it worth giving a shot. They didnt fully develop the game, but the time travel mechanic is well implemented. I havent played the game in a long time, but I think about it all the time.

Achron is one of those games that will make you genuinely question your sanity in the best possible way — the time travel mechanic is so thoroughly realized that I found myself instinctively reaching for a rewind button while playing other RTS games afterward. The core loop of jumping back to reinforce a failing attack, only to have your enemy counter by erasing the troops they sent in the first place, creates emergent strategy unlike anything I've experienced in the genre. That said, make no mistake: the underlying RTS is rough, with pathfinding that will make you want to tear your hair out and unit hierarchies that scatter like startled chickens instead of holding formation. The learning curve is genuinely steep — I failed the first mission before time travel was even introduced — and the voice acting and story won't be winning any awards. But if you can stomach the jank and invest the mental energy to truly grasp chronoenergy, time waves, and chronoporters, there's nothing else like this on the market, and that alone earns my recommendation on sale.

I got exactly what I wanted out of a time travel game, which is a bunch of "...wait... what? But I-- I thought I-- before-- *what*?" but supported by a firm guarantee that there *is* some coherent underlying ruleset that makes sense of everything, if only I can understand it. I wouldn't recommend this on its RTS merits alone -- as many reviews point out, the controls/pathing/etc. are kinda janky -- but the joy of struggling to figure out the time travel mechanism, and slowly, painfully, succeeding, pushes this well into Thumbs-Up territory for me.

I am happy to see I can buy two copies of this game for $19.99. I would not have purchased this game if my friend and I each had to pay $20 for it. Unfortunately, I cannot launch the game. Achron immediately says "Invalid Configuration. The Achron directory within the current user's home directory is corrupt or the home directory is unwritable.". All my Steam games work, so it seems more likely that there is an issue with Achron than that there is an issue with my write permissions. I have requested a refund for this game. It looks like this game is no longer under development, and a bug like this will not be fixed.

You want to start thinking with timetravel in actual meaningful ways? This is the game for you. Some crashing issues.