Asbury Pines

The gameplay and narrative are mashed together real badly so that you get all the characters and events as worker pieces in an idle prodiction game, then you've got to manage those resources across time periods as well as locally. So you get a raccoon writing the newspaper to produce enough knowledge while the pine tree scours the murder site for clues, the gas station lady is researching the giant sloth religion, and a seagull is farming snails. Its super incoherent. Managing all the pieces is awful because you're jumping between the life, scav, work and nature screens, the popups dont link you to anything. What's worse is that the narrative is okay as following the survivors of that tragedy that starts the game then you finally get to the final solution for the mystery and its stupid as hell. Its so bad. I cannot recommend this game at all. As a narrative game it fails, as an idler its so incoherent and gets so annoying especially with the awful UI which only gets worse the more eras you unlock. Super awful and stupid.

Not the best idler or incremental game but a really good narrative experience akin to reading a book. Not sure if I would be able to follow the plot that easily if it was a book though as UI helps with that a lot, so I am glad it is what it is.

Went in expecting a background idle game and got hooked on a murder mystery instead. Yeah it's an idle game, click things, resources build up, automations unlock, all the usual stuff. But the story is what actually got me. Offline progress works fine so it fits around a busy schedule, and there's no microtransaction nonsense trying to speed you up. Recommended.

i 100% this game and don't regret one minute of my time spent. it was so fun and unique, i doubt i'll ever find another one like it. the story was fun and the art was gorgeous. a cookie clicker if it was a mystery, essentially. well worth it :)

I've never played a game quite like this. The idle mechanics are fun and straight forward and the story is interesting. 10 000 000 snails, here I come!

I don't think I've ever played a game quite like this. It's interesting, it's fresh, it's not afraid to be weird (there are war snails), and I really enjoyed it. You're either letting a character's life story run or you're putting them to work for resources or research. If you treat the research as equally important to the other aspects early on, it'll help prevent some possible resource bottlenecks as the game progresses, since the research items boost gathering or change how resources flow across time. The ending might be polarizing; it's the kind of story where the conclusion just isn't going to please everybody. I liked it.