Feature Spotlight: The Clock and Period Mail

Time really passes in Live Through Time. Newspapers arrive on each era's schedule, letters take as long as they really would, and censors may read along.

The Timekeeper · 2026-10-08

In most AI RPGs, time is an illusion. You can forge a sword, cross a kingdom and have a three-hour conversation, and the world acts as if it all happened in the same five minutes. Worse, communication is instant: speak to someone in another city and they reply immediately, as if everyone in 1950 had a smartphone.

When we built Live Through Time, we knew that realism, and real tension, come from delay. Here's how the game tracks time, makes you wait, and delivers consequences when you least expect them.

The clock

Behind the scenes, every action you take moves a real calendar forward, by however long it would really take.

• A walk down the street might take a quarter of an hour.
• Choosing to sleep moves you on to the next morning.

Time passing isn't just flavour: the world moves while you're away. Characters who aren't in your scene keep working on their own goals. Skip a few days, and you may come back to find a rival has already got hold of the thing you were after.

The speed of history

The game watches the calendar to deliver news and post, but it follows the rules of your era.

In 1952 Chicago, you get your newspaper on Sunday morning. In Ancient Rome, the Acta Diurna is posted in the Forum every eighth day. In 1793 Paris, the Revolution abolishes Sunday altogether, and your news arrives every tenth day. Each edition mixes real historical headlines from that exact week with local rumours about what you've been up to.

Period mail and the censor's pen

Because the clock never stops, we completely overhauled long-distance communication. If you need a loan from an uncle in another state, you'll have to write a letter.

When you send one, the game works out when it would really arrive, and when a reply could come back, based on the post of the time. A letter across 1848 London might arrive within hours, thanks to many deliveries a day; a letter to a ship at sea waits until the ship reaches port.

Then… you wait. You carry on with the story until, finally: "A letter has arrived."

Even then, your post isn't guaranteed to be private. In 1983 East Berlin, your letter might arrive steamed open by the Stasi. On the Western Front in 1917, it might be stamped "Passed by Censor", with sensitive lines blacked out.

This fixes the instant-gratification problem of AI text adventures. Waiting days for a reply from a dangerous associate builds incredible tension, and proves the world doesn't stop just because you've posted a letter.

What's the most stressful wait you've had in an AI text adventure? Tell us on Discord.

In the manual: Time & the Clock · Letters & Telegrams · The Newspaper

Thanks for reading. See you in the past…