I was unaware of incremental mystery management sim Asbury Pines till kindly Mr_B mentioned it in this week’s Maw round-up. It launches into early access today, and has a pretty lung-emptying setup. You’re trying to solve a murder in a hitherto sleepy small American town. To do this, you must oversee and make connections between around 50 characters – some of them animals and plants – across 12 historical eras, spewing your brain outward from the present day to the Stone Age and the post-apocalyptic future.
This is presented as a dense and whirring mixtable of icons, bars, progression trees, timelines, and story cards, like a 4X research tree but with a narrative shoved through it. Did you think you were being a clever custard with your swanky evidence board in Alan Wake 2? Try Asbury Pines on for size, gumshoe – it’s like Cloud Atlas for accountants. They do call it “accessible” in marketing materials, mind.
