September 2026 Newsletter: Berlin, Iram and the Full Roster

Berlin: Shadows of the Wall completes our 12 historical eras and Iram: The City of Djinn completes the myths. The full roster of 136 stories is here.

The Timekeeper · 2026-09-01

Another month, another set of updates, and another newsletter from the Live Through Time team. We're celebrating the release of our latest historical era and latest mythological saga, which complete our originally planned core roster. But we're not resting on our laurels: there are exciting new modes already in the pipeline.

Feel free to join us on Discord to get involved in the future of the platform, share your worlds and stories, or get any support you need.

Our 12th historical era

When we began this project last year, the original idea was a slice-of-life text adventure set in a different time and place. We mapped out 12 eras with 9 stories each with that in mind. The idea quickly grew so that each story had immediate objectives alongside an overarching destiny.

The cast grew too. Moving away from generic types like "a US Marshal in the Old West" or "an English navigator in Edo", we methodically rebuilt the roster around real historical figures wherever possible: Virgil Earp in Tombstone, William Adams in Edo, and even my own great-grandfather in 1917.

That work continues behind the scenes, and it has shaped our 12th timeline, Berlin: Shadows of the Wall, released today. The premise for Berlin was created months ago, but it never quite felt right: we'd go away, come back, go away again. The switch to real people, and expanding to both East and West Berlin rather than just the East, made everything click. Our previous escape-helper character was fine, but changing to the real-life Hasso Herschel lifts the experience completely. Herschel helped more than 1,000 East Germans escape to the West and was instrumental in digging the famous Tunnels 29 and 57 in the 1960s. Our story is named after one of those tunnels, in homage to Herschel, who died earlier this year at the age of 91.

Our 7th mythological saga

The finale of our mythological series launched recently, and Iram: The City of Djinn has quickly become one of my personal favourites. Playing as Sinbad, Aladdin, Scheherazade and Morgiana lets you experience these legendary figures as their authentic, canonical selves rather than modern sanitised versions.

As with all our official myths, the stories are told across seven chapters. You're still free to forge your own path, but the chapters keep the story focused and faithful to the folklore. See Myth Through Time.

Your Community

Since the launch of Craft Your Own World and the Unbound Engine, our growing community has produced some incredible worlds. One is an original concept by Discord member Leia90, who has kindly let me share it: The Rupture, an anthology series set in the Vespera Expanse after a cataclysm disables faster-than-light travel and ship-to-ship weapons. She has published several stories in this timeline and marked the universe as Open, so anyone can create and publish stories there too.

Timekeeper Mode

Players have always been able to direct scenes and rewind time; we've now expanded those abilities into Timekeeper Mode. It gives you full control of the story: edit character profiles, change world lore and tweak the system rules mid-campaign. You can edit the narrator's replies, export your story, and, if you're the creator, save newly discovered people and places back to the original world so they appear in every future game. See Timekeeper Mode.

We've also made sure you keep custody of your data: stories, worlds, sessions and logs can all be exported. We now support V2 character cards and true round-trip save files (.lttsave). Export your running campaign, adjust the world and re-import your timeline without losing progress. See Exporting Your Stories & Characters.

The full roster

So there we have it: the full roster is now available. 136 hand-crafted stories spanning 1300 BC Olympus to 1983 Cold War Berlin, from gladiators in the Colosseum and buccaneers on the high seas to the last prince of the Völsungs and a Jamaican bus conductor confronting discrimination in post-war Britain.

But we won't stop there. We have three more game modes in development, all, we believe, unique in the world of AI text adventures, and I'm sure we'll create more official timelines too. The lesser-known but incredibly important stories of the Second World War are probably my next focus.

Thanks for reading. See you in the past…