Ann Achronist: Many Happy Returns

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

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.

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!

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

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!

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!

Overall I think that this is a very well made game. Story based games aren't normally my thing but when I started playing this game it got dragged in and ended up playing it for hours on end. Its a greatly composed game with a developer that is actively fixing bugs and interacting with its community, with multiple achievements and several timelines to play through. The biggest thing that surprises me is the masterful use of time travel, very few games can pull off time travel as fluidly and great as this game. Secondly the story is well as you'd expect a story game to be, immersive and generally a good time. However i would not recommend this game to people who expect a straight forward story that moves quickly as this game has puzzles and requires some repetition to pass some levels, though it takes nothing away from the game. overall i would give this game a solid 4.5/5

I really enjoyed this game! I don't know if there are more versions of Ann that I haven't encountered yet but the concept is wonderful. Fans of Life of Strange 1 and such media as ground hogs day will recognise the time travel genre in this rpgmaker style game. My inner child was kicked into high gear on playing this and I really couldn't recommend this game more--its a true hidden gem. There seems to be no monster fighting grinding to worry about, just honest role playing and destroying the space time continuum one step at a time. I truly had a lot of fun playing this. I give this game 4.5 time anomolies out of 5!

This is a very fun time travel adventure game, though it can be quite challenging at times to figure out the next step. The ending was totally worth it. I really hope to see more from this developer.

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.