The unreal-time strategy of Experimental Gameplay darling Achron
The game that's getting the biggest buzz from this year's GDC Experimental Gameplay Sessions? Christopher Hazard and Michael Resnick's Achron, which -- contrary to (my) first impression -- isn't a typo of the classic EA board/strategy game, but is instead a "meta-time strategy game."
That is to say it makes Braid's back-and-forth-scrubbing time manipulations look like baby business next to its own essentially asynchronous (in every respect) multiplayer strategy. The video above gives a general idea how a multiplayer game might operate -- with the ability to manipulate your troops within a window of each time-wave and erase potential mistakes -- and is the only gameplay instruction in which you'll hear a developer refer to "when your enemy is" without skipping a beat.
More info on and more videos of the game are available at the official Achron site.
Achron - Time Travel is Coming [Hazardous Software]
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russtolium
#1 – 6:48 PM March 31, 2009
I imagine myself playing this and about every 5 minutes my jaw would drop and I'd slap my forehead and say "whaaaaaaaaaaaaat!?". After repeating this half a dozen times, rage quit likelihood will have reached 100%. In other news, I suck at RTS (and time travel.)
arne
#2 – 8:03 PM March 31, 2009
I saw this during the Experimental Gameplay session at GDC. This is a pretty awesome concept and it seems like they've got the granular details worked out so the game will play fair. There was an awesome account of a game during the session which ultimately ended up in one playing nuking his own troops thanks to crafty time travel on the part of his opponent. That is made of pure awesome.
So is "chrono-fragging."
Krackatoa
#3 – 12:40 AM April 1, 2009
Imagine if you applied these concepts to first or third person shooters... or... or something... would that even work?
I really don't know what to say at the moment. My brain hurts.
Cosmonaut Zero
#4 – 9:43 AM April 2, 2009
Any game that needs to show you WHEN your opponent is is worth a look. Looks mind-bending in a good way, like Echocrome or Rubik's Tesseract.