14 DAY TRIAL // When people think of strategy games, they think of stuff like Red Alert 3, the Command & Conquer series, or, if they are more niche, of Empire: Total War from Creative Assembly or Europa Universalis from Paradox Interactive.
But in a few years, when talking about strategy, we might not be able to approach the subject without mentioning Achron, a game presented by Hazardous Software at this year's Game Developers Conference, as part of the Experimental Gameplay Session.
Achron is billing itself as being “the world’s first meta-time strategy game.” Basically, the title introduces time travel to real time strategy gaming. Not in the way in which Tanya can go back in time a few seconds but in a way that you can go back in in-game time and attack the enemy there.
As the developer put it, “players and units have the ability to jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently.” It sounds crazy and you can take a look below to see how it might look in action. Yes, it's pretty mind-bending, but it can revolutionize the genre if players become interested in seeing something like this.
Imagine the possibilities that open up: repairing that nagging mistake that you made in the past, see your enemie’s plans before they are realized, destroy him/her when he/she is weak. The only question is how they plan to deal with the dreaded grandfather paradox.
Mike Resnick, who is the lead developer and cofounder of Hazardous Software, stated that “Achron signifies the creation of a brand new sub-genre of video games that utilize gimmick-free time travel as one of the core gameplay mechanisms. The popular type of time travel abundant in science fiction is now available to the gaming community.”
The guys at Hazardous Games have said that more information related to Achron is set to be revealed in the coming months.
Here's a video of the game in action: