Achron the time-travel RTS now playable

Achron, the time-travelling RTS which first piqued our interest last year when we had a chat with lead designer Chris Hazard, has quietly sneaked up on us and is now available for pre-order from the official site.

Inspired by classic RTS games like Starcraft, Achron's biggest feature is the fact that players can use time-travel as a weapon and jump back and forth in time to alter battles before they occur, thus changing the outcome. Hazardous Software has somehow found a way to make the idea feasible in both single and multiplayer games, apparently.

"Achron is the first game that gives all players the ability to time travel entirely at will," Chris said when we interviewed him last year. "Not only that, but all players and their units can time travel independently. Achron enables players to participate in temporal warfare that has previously been limited to science fiction stories. We call it a ‘meta-time strategy game’ because while it’s still an RTS, you have the ability to transcend the in-game timeline."

The idea sounds intimidating, but Hazardous Software is confident that the actual game will be suitable for most skill levels.

"People aren’t used to thinking in terms of time travel, they often jump to the most complex scenarios and paradoxes," explained Chris. "However, these complex scenarios aren’t typical in gameplay unless you purposefully cause them, and usually you’re simply modifying a history you are familiar with because you just played through it."

The game is currently available for pre-order at the price of $29.99 USD and ordering now gets you access to a stable alpha build of the game which includes five singleplayer levels. We'll be taking a look at it in the near future (or past), as well as a full review in due course. For more information on the game you can check our interview with Chris, where he explains how the game deals with things like the Grandfather Paradox.

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