Achron

The main aspect in Achron is the use of "chronoporters" that allow the equipment or troops to be transported to certain instances of time. Players can simultaneously play in the past, present, or future. Only a certain distance can be traveled in the past. After a while, the time-waves will occur, bringing along every change from the past into the present. Because the changes aren't instant, that gives the players a chance to react to the opponents' moves before they become irrevocable and directly linked to the present.

For instance, if the player is attacked at an unexpected spot, they can travel to the past and move their army towards the spot where they now know the attack will occur. Or if the player waged a battle which ended in defeat, they can jump to the past and prevent the battle from ever happening. That said, the opponent may alter the course of events as well in order to counter any changes in history the player made. Entire battles may take place in the speculative future as well, and players may take a look into the future to know what the results of their actions will be. Any opponent's unit can be "infected" with nanites, which allows the player to take control over it and see from its line of sight.

Hundreds of years in the future, humans have begun colonizing other worlds, however they have been reliant on conventional propulsion systems that may take hundreds of years to reach their destination. This all changed when alien ruins were discovered in the Remnant system. Technology present in the ruins led to the development of instantaneous teleportation. Within a few decades, all colonies were linked by a network of gates, and new colonies could be constructed in significantly less time.

However, humans never came across another intelligent race, until communications with a border colony suddenly stopped. Several other colonies followed, and an enormous alien fleet was found laying waste to one of the colonies. A huge fleet was called to the Remnant system to meet the invaders; however, they were outthought and outmaneuvered at every turn, despite the invader's inferior firepower. As discipline broke down, the data feed from the Remnant gate went dark.

In 1999, Chris Hazard came up with a time travel video game concept during a conversation with his friend about Homeworld. It eventually led to the start of the development two years later. During that time, it was concluded that the current technology wasn't strong enough to handle the planned content. The project was restarted around 2006/2007, and Hazard brought his friend Mike Resnick to work together on it.

They split the production tasks while working full-time - Hazard coded the Resequence Engine which powered the game, while Resnick integrated the art assets and designed the units logic. Achron was ready to be shown at the Game Developers Conference 2009. Every game tester was able to use the time travel option right at the beginning, with a design choice to slowly introduce the players to the mechanics by facing them with increasingly more difficult situations.

Achron received generally mixed reviews from critics. It polarized many critics, receiving scores as high as 9/10 and as low as 3/10. On Metacritic it has a score of 54 out of 100 based on reviews from 11 critics. It won Best Original Game Mechanic from GameSpot in 2011.

The game received criticism for its graphics and poor pathfinding.