
A grisly mystery in a small town unfolds across centuries through the stories of its residents. Orchestrate their work, grow resources, upgrade skills, and create automated production loops between past and future eras. All to uncover a sprawling secret embedded in the flow of time.
Modeled estimate, not a reported figure. How we estimate →
Media

About
“Godforsaken. No other word for it. A murder so brutal it made the whole town of Asbury Pines look itself in the mirror. We work, we raise kids, we do our best, we let time run its course, and then we’re still left scratchin’ our heads. Why did this evil have to happen?”
- Rodney “Buzz” Snow, Sheriff of Asbury Pines
Asbury Pines is a first-of-its-kind story incremental/idler title. Combine and synthesize the work of Asbury Pines townfolk (the Pinies) to unveil a murder mystery across the small town’s history – from the late stone age to the deep future. Immersive writing and image-rich worldbuilding pair with idle/incremental gameplay. As you unlock an array of characters, artifacts and places from one era to the next, combine them and their unique stats in different ways to build and link resource production economies… across centuries. What emerges is a sprawling factory of working lives that unveils a story embedded in the flow of time.
If you enjoy gameplay that balances resource management, rich narrative development, automation/factory strategy, and idle progression, Asbury Pines was made for you!

From Hrokk the caveman to Moharan the temporal physicist, strategize and connect the work of Pinies through the dozen eras of Asbury Pines history. As you create and modify your resource production engine, you unlock more people, places, and upgrades that combine to strengthen yields and unveil greater depths of a grand mystery.

The breadth and possibility of your plans grow alongside the story.

There ain’t any angels among the Pinies, but a good many are hearty folk who aspire to make a proud home. How did this bizarre murder happen, and why? The narrative begins in the present day and spreads – past and future – across 12 eras from the late stone age to the deep hereafter. Each era brings more details, characters, intrigue, and answers to a mystery that spans the flow of time.

Explore how individual insights, conversations, and documents – stories from wildlife, artifacts, inhabitants, heroes, and invaders – piece together and connect one era to the next, one answer to another.

More than 50 people, plants, and animals with unique stats and backgrounds emerge across the history of Asbury Pines. They drive the mystery with their personal stories, age across timelines, and contribute to the resource growth needed to progress.

Features
Expansive worldbuilding based on an image-rich narrative.
Accessible and evolving progression systems that build on unlocked content, characters, and places.
Many hours of balanced resource management, story development, and progression gameplay.
More than 50 characters with 350+ stories to discover and utilize.
Offline progression can be enabled/disabled and game speed increased for different play styles.
No microtransactions for consistent player experience.
Genres
Stats
All-time low is the lowest price we've recorded for this game since we started tracking it.
Languages: English
Engagement
Hours played at review time, across 42 reviews with recorded playtime.
Reviews
Themes across 42 recent reviews and how positive each mention is. A keyword signal, not full sentiment analysis.
positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up
Reviews
I really enjoyed this game. It's in early access now, but I think it'll be even better once it has some balancing.
I enjoyed this game a lot. I think anyone that enjoys piecing a story together will enjoy it as well, because that is a requirement - the game will hand you story beats and you need to stitch them together (although there is a 'Quests' menu that will collate things together, but it's.. massive because it encompasses everything from everywhere). Over a 20+ hour playthrough, I understand now why it bounced between eras, why there were so many characters.. and I don't regret the playthrough or purchase because it was, ultimately, very satisfying. The "final" story piece especially was poignant. As far as gameplay goes, this was fine as well. I don't know when they were added, but the ability to set the game speed higher than 1x seems cool, and having the ability to "skip ahead" 4, 8, or 12 hours is neat. I played at 1x speed but used a bit of skipping to get the final achievement I needed to get that was related to resource production. The game is not perfect - there are typos sometimes, graphical problems, but nothing that was critical or game-breaking - but it is actively being worked on. The last developer roadmap post indicates some systems are going to be significantly reworked, and that may make the gameplay experience even better. Long review short: if you're curious, are okay getting a drip-fed story, and want a hybrid playstyle (active to prioritize short-term things, idle for longer researches), this is a great game for the price.
I ... really want to like it. I love what they're doing by mixing an idle game and a more story-heavy experience. But the ending of story suuuuuucks. [spoiler] For a literary game about time travel, a coherent model *of* time travel is necessary. And Asbury Pines doesn't have one. In-text, it's made very clear that everything is predestined; the past is a cycle that cannot be changed. In that case, the whole idea that Everly Praetis must die to preserve the timeline is nonsensical. If the past can't be changed, then she *will* die regardless of what anyone does, and all of the very smart Quentian characters should know that. If time *can* be changed then it seems like they have a duty to, say, prevent the apocalypse that kills 95% of the world? If they're really that amazing of people (which the game constantly tells us), they should be willing to at least *consider* sacrificing their timeline's stability to save 7 billion+ people. So either the timeline can be changed and the Quentians are monsters, or it can't, and the whole plot is meaningless and different parts of the story rely on different of these being true. [\spoiler] I like what they're doing here, but this game lives or dies on its story, and its story needed another few consistency drafts. If you don't care about [spoiler] time travel [/spoiler] consistency, you might like it
I really enjoyed this game with its ups and downs. I was drawn in by the story, it kept pulling me in, then I had a little change of heart when the whole future bits started and it all went downhill for me, but somehow, the game managed to pull me back in as more and more of the world started unfolding. The world is very brutal yet hopeful, a very well balanced feat, in my opinion. With one notable exception that I see a lot of people complain about, the story completes marvelously, ties up all (but one egregious) loose ends and does an excellent job at conveying the message it had set out to convey. Yes, there are some artificial bottlenecks here and there, added in just to pad gameplay, yes, a few of the story beats and characters don't make sense, but overall this is an excellent game. Thoroughly enjoyed my time with this one, so much that I went ahead and 100% it. Notes on the 100%: I finished the main game and got about 88% completion with the intended 1x speed. Speedrushed through the final percents because I just wanted to knock everything out
Oh my. This is fascinating. I like mysteries, character-driven stories, and idle games so there's nothing to not like about this game.
One of the most incredible narratives I've ever experienced. The way this story unfolds had me choked up for the death of a piece of grass. The ability of the author to show humanity's capacity for overwhelming cruelty alongside our infinite ingenuity and optimism was truly amazing.
"Story-based idle game" is a weird mashup. And while it does make sense with the way everything is unfolding, the two opposing sides sometimes just stand in each other's way. The idle game part isn't great. It's fine, don't get me wrong, but there are certainly better ways to watch numbers go up. This brings us to the heart of the matter, the story itself. And while there are some plot-holes, some inconsistancies, some characters you don't care about, the best way to sum it up is this: This game hits you in the feelings. This is art. You feel for every new batch of characters and hope against hope that things will turn out fine. It makes you cry, it makes you smile, it makes you root (pun intended) for Oopsie and BG, all before making you cry again. You will need to pay attention and let the story in, but ultimately any art that makes you feel is good art, no matter the flaws.
The first thing that pulled me in was the weird UI. It was what lured me to buy it. The first minutes in the game was trying to decipher the UI and I truly enjoyed that. For every screen that seems a bit confusing, you either end up figuring it out, or the Help Manual helps you. The first progression loops are engaging. Only that, since I'm not a hardcore idle player, I didn't realize on the first try that the game would keep advancing while I was away. But I didn't feel that the game progression was broken or anything... I liked the ability to tune the speed and to jump forward in time, but I used it sparsely, since most of the game has a good pace. By the first jump in time, you know this is going to get tasty! 🤤 By starting in the "Present", I first assumed that the game would have just 3 timeframes, or 5 eras tops... so each new one was like "ANOTHER ONE EVEN?". It's a content heavy game and I imagine that it must have taken lots of effort to build! At some points I felt blocked by not knowing which character was not blocked from living. But soon I noticed that I could check all People, Plants and Animals and just see who needs their resources now. The production chains are not too complex. It just takes checking the production chains and see what needs to be activated/deactivated. In that regard, for an incremental game, it can be a bit shallow. But I didn't care at all since I was enjoying the narrative aspects so much!! (I love narrative games that have some unique mechanics) The writing is really soooo gooooood! I found myself absolutely delighted by some of the passages. The theme is nicely references in details like events sort of repeating in a similar way. Even the animals and plants have so much to say! In terms of narrative, I also liked the overall message of fraternity and optimism. In fact I even found it inspiring! The piece by Quentin P. Brown moved ME first before I read how it inspired Danny and all the rest! I found it maybe too optimistic at times near the ending, and some logic doesn't always 100% hold but I didn't mind. We need more optimistic and inspiring fantasies! The ending was a bit predictable by the time I was unlocking the Dust Age or so. Some of my own deductions, the game later states in detail for clarification. But I would have liked some more suspense until the ending... like some "will she or won't she". But by that point you know exactly what's going to happen. Up until then, many other little mysteries get gradually revealed and in this sense the narrative is structured very neatly. The art style is very cute! I like both the graphic design and the vector-like illustrations. Looks sort of like a poster! The music is also top tier! At first I found it a bit repetitive... it's only 7 standard length tracks... but then, I found that I didn't want to turn it off. I think it has a lot of "rehearability" because of the acoustic instruments, that give it warmth, variety... My favorite is "Up and Coming" by Cole Johnson AKA Flink Pamingo. That modulation going down step by step and then twisting up again is very catchy! Overall I'd say a 9/10. Definitely a milestone in videogames history!
It was something :)
I started this game while high, and 57 minutes in the Praetis murder bowled me over like a sledgehammer. What the hell am I in for here?
Related
Related
Trends
Concurrent players on Steam, sampled daily since tracking started.
Audience
Estimated from the language of this game's reviews — a proxy for where players are, not official Steam demographics.
Related
| 9-nine-:NewEpisode | $124.4K | 724 | 94% | $9.99 |
| SYMMETRY | $124.4K | 308 | 55% | $11.99 |
| Industry Manager: Future Technologies | $124.5K | 233 | 57% | $14.99 |
| Zombie Bowl-o-Rama | $124.5K | 463 | 88% | $9.99 |
| Crime Simulator: Playgrounds | $124.3K | 2.1K | 73% | $1.99 |
| JOY OF PROGRAMMING - Software Engineering Simulator | $124.3K | 387 | 77% | $17.99 |
Related
| Slime Rancher | $73.8M | 155.4K | 98% | $19.99 |
| Subnautica 2 | $65.1M | 112.6K | 91% | $29.99 |
| The Scroll of Taiwu : Beyond The Dome | $51M | 56K | 66% | $29.99 |
| Wobbly Life | $27.2M | 34.9K | 97% | $24.99 |
| Drive Beyond Horizons | $15.4M | 19.7K | 78% | $24.99 |
| Tower Unite | $14.5M | 21.8K | 90% | $19.99 |