Pros:
- really unique mechanics
- great writing
- gripping storyline
- stayed up all night to finish it
Cons:
- not always clear what to do next
- later puzzles are really hard
- having to repeat a day if you make a mistake
- stayed up all night to finish it

What do you get if you cross Groundhog Day, Majora's Mask and Life Is Strange? An amazing game, apparently!

Ann Achronist is a game about bettering your circumstances, little by little, by repeatedly visiting the past to improve your present-day life. Each improvement brings with it a new skill that can be used on subsequent trips to the past.

The game plays like a puzzle game, where parts of the day act as pieces of the puzzle. By using knowledge about the people and what their schedule is for the day, you can figure out how to proceed. The minigame puzzles (lockpicking and mindmapping) are a lot of fun too! I'm a big fan of word puzzles.

I had a lot of preconceptions about the game before I bought it, but I didn't anticipate how funny the game would be! Although it isn't a straight up comedy, per se, there's a laugh a minute, even if it's just a small chuckle.

As for downsides, obviously repeating the same day over and over could get stale, but the fast-forward options (making the day go faster and increasing travel speed) and the skip function for dialogue makes it painless to quickly speed through the day when you know what you need to do and where you need to go.

When's the sequel!! :D

I picked this up on sale and then spent quite a lot of time completing it in a couple of days. I thought it was really charming and quirky and I enjoyed the time travelling mechanic. Recommended!

I just finished this game after playing it non-stop for 2 days in a feverish obsession. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPG adventure games. The narrative is unique and interesting - each of Ann's timelines have unique traits from physic mind-reading in the witch timeline to blackmailing people as a criminal mastermind. The citizens of Alderdale are well-developed characters with detailed backstories, personalities and flaws that really build the world of Ann Achronist and make it highly realistic. The dialogue and narrative is often hilarious, and the puzzles are challenging enough to make it feel like an achievement when you beat them!

If you like time travel and time looping games, then this game is for you. I've played games with a premise of time travel before where it's really just a story thing and you end up just linearly following the plot. But with Ann Achronist you actually do bounce back and forth between various timelines. Each one has its advantages that are necessary to advance the game, but each one is also an ending in itself.

The main story is not particularly hard or long in my opinion. I finished it in 7 hours or so, but there are a number of side secrets. Some of which I found, and some of which I am still looking for. And there do seem to be multiple solutions for several of the objectives. The characters are not particularly deep, but they have their quirks. And the tone is overall comedic. I laughed several times.

There are two different minigames that come up every so often. It's in the trailer so I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the mind reading one is fun and engaging. The lock picking one is not so great. It might just be me, but once it gets past 10 letters it just gets frustratingly random.

Now there is one definite negative in that the game crashed for me several times. However the developer says they're working on that so hopefully that won't be a problem for long. And fortunately the mechanics of the game means that no single run takes very long. So even a crash doesn't really set you back much.

Overall I had a good time with this. It's short, but that just means it doesn't cram in a bunch of filler. Everything you find is meaningful in some way. I got pretty invested in Ann's story so I'd recommend this to anyone who likes adventure games. And definitely if you also like games dealing with time travel.

Ann Achronist has a simple goal. Using a magic ring that allows her to travel through time and relive one day in the distant past over and over again, she wants to improve her ancestor's and subsequently her own life. Things, of course, aren't quite that simple. Social climbing isn't very easy in 18th century England and effects 200 years down the line are hard to predict...

After years of experience making immensely popular Minecraft maps this is Mabye Later's first independent release and first attempt at a narrative game and I'd call it a success! The game is charming, well written with a lot of humor and features beautifully drawn art and engaging gameplay. Every loop presents an opportunity to learn something about one of the numerous people living in Alderdale or the town itself, every unlocked ending opens up new possibilities and the convenient skip feature allows you to fast forward through already read dialogue.

I experienced some crashes during my playthrough, but most of the issues I ran into have been patched and because of the looping it's impossible to lose more than one in game day of progress.

At ~10 hours of gameplay I'd say Ann Achronist is well worth its price and I'd definitely recommend it!

A fun little game to play, though challenging. Sometimes it's not clear what to do next, so the only thing you can do is try different things and pay attention to what people are saying and doing.

Good.

A really good first showing from the developer. The dialogue and characters are the highlight, and I especially liked and sympathised with the main character Ana, her struggle and desire for a better life while not really knowing what that entailed was something I think most people can understand.

The game takes place entirely within one village, with multiple 'endings' everytime you manage to change the course of Ana's present, being able to unlock more things to do in the village as you gain more Ana's with more abilities. I'll be honest, I never knew I'd be so excited to unlock the ability to read.

I don't want to get into the story because I really think the game is far more enjoyable if you play it yourself without any guides or any idea where the story is heading. I will say, getting your palm read and asking for guidance in the village are good ways to find out what you can do next to complete more quests and unlock more abilities.

Definitely happy with my money spent.

Disclosure: Daniel Carter is my bff and I got to playtest and watch this game go from a half-formed idea to a really polished adorable narrative adventure. It was crazy cool.

The central premise of the game is that you have one day in the past which you replay repeatedly with new skillsets to work your way through a series of progressively better outcomes for yourself in the present. You even canonically retain your knowledge of each iteration in-universe.

It actually reminded me a little bit of Virtue's Last Reward which has a similar parallel timelines mechanic, and VLR is one of my favorite games ever!

Anyways, so the objectives revolve mostly around not-so-subtly influencing the life of one of your ancestors and returning to the present to see how that affects Ann's life. It's rarely all peaches and roses though, since cause and effect is unpredictable, and hence the need to keep going back to fix your progressively weirder messes.

The writing is full of heart, and the characters all have their own fun and unique personalities. There's one stand-out in particular, but I'll leave you to figure out who that is on your own :)

The setting is really flavorful as well, and a lot of the dialogue and descriptions had me laughing out loud. The endings were sometimes quirky, sometimes weirdly funny, and sometimes sad. The art for them was beautiful.

It's a lot of fun to return to Alderdale, gradually learning the ins-and-outs of how that particular day plays out, and how you can change it to your benefit to ultimately work towards the best ending.

Most of all though, I wanna give massive props to Dan, who spent what feels like ages making this thing real mostly on his own (writing aside).

It may not be super obvious if you've never seen 'behind the curtain', but developing a game, even a relatively short one like this, is a huge undertaking that takes effort, love, patience, and most of all perseverance.

The world is littered with half-finished games that were given up on and I'm so so glad this didn't become one of them.

Keep on killing it, Dan :p