Another Eden

I’ve loaded Chrono Trigger maybe five times since the ’90s, never finished it the same way twice. The branching endings meant you could always convince yourself there was more to see, another route through Zeal or another conversation at the End of Time. Masato Kato and Yasunori Mitsuda made something that felt inexhaustible.

They released a mobile RPG called Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space—time travel, ensemble cast, the standard JRPG machinery but assembled with thought. Free-to-play on iOS and Android, available in Japan, the US, Canada, South Korea, and a few other places. Not Europe yet. The game updates constantly and apparently has enough content to justify the name.

Chrono Trigger was their masterpiece. They could have stopped there, let the game sit untouched in everyone’s memory as the perfect thing. Instead they’re designing worlds, thinking about how to make time travel matter thematically instead of just mechanically. It’s not another Chrono Trigger. It’s them doing what they did before.

I haven’t played it. Mobile games always feel like they’re asking for something—money, attention, time—and what you get back doesn’t balance. The free-to-play model is a contract in small print. But knowing they’re out there building, that they didn’t stop, matters somehow. You don’t get to see that very often with the artists whose work actually stuck with you.