Achron: RTS Time Travel Is Engaging and Scary

Achron is the sort of brain bending experience that managed to make a title like Portal a success. Actually, Achron is closer to Braid in that it allows players to control their units not only in the three dimensions of physical space but also in the flow of time. But where Braid only tasked you with controlling one character as he moved through a linear level with the time flow being a mechanic that helped solve puzzles and undo a few bad jumps, in Achron, time traveling is much more. It could make the game too much to handle for a poor gamer like me but it also has the power to change how we look at time and gaming forever.

Imagine that you control ten units on the playing field. You can link each one to another to share commands and you can also set the defend and attack orders independently. But the orders can be issued not only in the present but also in the past or even the future, allowing the player to preempt enemy assaults and to scout in the past better positions for the present or the future.

This is already complicated enough. But the enemy player can also shift their temporal position, allowing them to do the same. Thankfully, there's a moment when the past becomes set in stone and no further commands can be back issued, as otherwise games might devolve into endless time traveling to preempt attacks.

The game also helps the player by only delivering changes made in the past through waves and not instantly. This basically means that the fights will be clustered in these waves with each side aiming to get to the present with the best position. The limited resource is the chronoenergy used to power commands in the past. At the moment, the game only has a few missions and the AI is mostly passive but the potential for a hugely complicated RTS is already there.

Yet after a few days of play, it seems that the experience needs to be further streamlined as not to overwhelm the player. Even the most basic of scenarios can quickly become mind-boggling if you make a few time changes that you do not keep track of or if you let the enemy slip.

The third training mission is difficult enough and I dread the day when the developers at Hazardous Software implement multiplayer allowing two humans to go head to head with the possibility of changing the past. Still, I will keep playing, trying to wrap my head around time control and see how the game will turn out. If you are interested in knowing more about Achron, take a look at the official site and the forum, which features very in-depth discussions.