Comparison

Live Through Time vs Atheling

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Live Through Time

Experience a revolutionary text-based RPG where your choices have lasting consequences. This AI life simulator features a persistent world that remembers your actions and relationships, offering deep immersion with unique visuals and audio.

Highlights
  • Persistent AI world that remembers player choices
  • Dynamic narrative generation
  • 1,500+ unique portraits and custom audio
  • Ambitions UI and 'Instincts' for guidance
  • 100+ historical personas across interwoven eras
  • Gritty historical realism
  • Deep state-tracking engine
Features
Read full description

When do you want to live? Forget generic AI chatbots, passive story generators, and AI amnesia. Live Through Time is an uncompromising, historically authentic, and mythological text RPG driven by a proprietary 3-Pillar Hybrid Engine: deep generative prose, an ironclad deterministic JSON state machine, and a relational GraphRAG memory database. Every wound you suffer, coin you spend, and enemy you make is mathematically enforced. If you make reckless decisions, the world will not save you. THE 3 PILLARS OF OUR UNBEATABLE ENGINE: 1. The Narrative Engines (Hourglass, Oracle, and Unbound): Generates rich, atmospheric second-person prose while enforcing real physical laws, tactical environments, and historical limits. 2. The Ledger System: A strict state machine tracking your immediate inventory, health, wealth, active Oaths, and physical surroundings. Items do not vanish. Wounds do not miraculously heal. 3. The Librarian & Chronicle: Over 4,000 lore cards dynamically interlinked. Betray an ally or bury an artifact, and the database commits that truth permanently across hundreds of turns. 12 FULL HISTORICAL ERAS (SANDBOX REALISM) Drop into 12 meticulously researched timelines with over 100 historical figures: • Imperial Rome (80 AD) – Colosseum gladiators, patrician intrigue, and the Subura underbelly. • The Black Death (London 1348) – Scavenge and survive during the medieval plague. • Feudal Japan (1603) – Samurai honor, ronin skirmishes, and the dawn of Edo. • Nassau Buccaneers (1715) – Piracy, naval combat, and colonial trade empires. • The French Terror (Paris 1793) – Revolutionary tribunals and the guillotine. • Victorian London (1848) – Industrial slums, workhouses, and class warfare. • Tombstone Frontier (1881) – Gunfights, silver mines, and frontier lawmen. • Western Front (1917) – Slogging artillery barrages and trench warfare. • Deep South (Mississippi 1933) – Great Depression blues, drought, and bootlegging. • Syndicate Streets (Chicago 1952) – Mob warfare, dirty cops, and speakeasies. • Pirate Radio (London 1966) – Offshore rock stations and counterculture heists. • Cold War Divided (Berlin 1983) – Stasi surveillance, border tunnels, and espionage. 7 MYTHOLOGICAL SAGAS (EPISODIC 7-CHAPTER ARCS) Walk among ancient gods and monsters in structured, multi-chapter epic campaigns: • Olympus: Gods & Monsters (Greek) – Perseus, Atalanta, Jason, and Odysseus. • Midgard: The Heroic Age (Norse) – Shieldmaidens, runic curses, and Ragnarök. • Duat: The Scales of Fate (Egyptian) – Anubis, Osiris, and trials of the underworld. • Avalon: Mists of Camelot (Arthurian) – The Holy Grail, chivalry, and dark fae pacts. • Shenzhou: The Jade Throne (Chinese) – Cultivation, imperial mandates, and demons. • Aztlán: The Blood Sun (Mesoamerican) – Solar rituals, jaguar knights, and cosmic tribute. • Iram: City of Djinn (Arabian) – Scheherazade, Sinbad, sandstorms, and ancient spirits. NEXT-GENERATION NPC BEHAVIOR • Speech Fingerprints: Dockworkers, emperors, and street thieves speak with distinct historical dialects and rhythms. • Refusal Anchors: NPCs are not agreeable yes-men. They hold strict boundaries they will never cross without true psychological or physical leverage. • 3D Emotional Vectors: Real relationships aren't a flat slider. NPCs track Trust, Fear, and Intimacy independently. • Autonomous Off-Screen Clocks: Rival factions and enemies advance their own agendas in the background. The world does not pause while you talk. TOTAL CREATIVE FREEDOM • Forge Your Own Destiny (CYOC): Build custom characters and insert them into any era • Craft Your Own World (CYOT): Construct custom timelines, write world rules, and share them with the community • Timekeeper Mode: Inspect and edit narrative blueprints mid-session, rewrite AI messages, and export complete chat logs • The Rewind Mechanic: True lethality with a fair fallback Step into the past. Shape the myth. Face the consequences. Terms of Use: https://www.livethroughtime.com/terms

About

Atheling

Features
Read full description

Atheling is a medieval historical strategy game where real history is only the beginning. Become King of England in 1066 and decide what happens after the Battle of Hastings. Rule your kingdom, make political choices, build a dynasty and survive war, rival claims and succession as history drifts further from the version we know. Part turn based strategy, part dynasty simulator and part political life simulator, Atheling puts people and decisions at the centre of medieval history. Each campaign begins with a rich historical foundation: real rulers, families, rivalries, claims, relationships, battles and political conflicts drawn from the period. The people, relationships and pressures are grounded in history, but your choices can completely change what happens next. Replay campaigns as many times as you like, or continue your alternate history far beyond their original ending in sandbox mode. RULE, SURVIVE, CONTINUE Manage war, marriage, claims, relationships, legitimacy, alliances and succession. Your ruler will age and eventually die, but your dynasty continues. Children inherit. Rivals return. Alliances break. Claims pass between generations. Decisions made years earlier can become the next ruler's problem. CHANGE HISTORY Atheling combines the freedom of choice games with the long-term consequences of turn based strategy. Win a battle that was historically lost. Keep someone alive who was supposed to die. Create a royal marriage that never happened. Put a different family on the throne. Prevent a succession crisis, or accidentally create one. Some campaigns may stay close to recorded history. Others can become almost unrecognisable. BEGIN IN 1066 Take control of England during one of the most dramatic moments in medieval history. Face the rival claims of Harold Godwinson, William of Normandy and other contenders for the English crown. Survive invasions, the Battle of Hastings and the political struggle that follows. Other campaigns let you experience different rulers and periods, each with their own families, enemies and historical pressures. A MEDIEVAL STRATEGY GAME ABOUT PEOPLE Atheling is not about painting a map one territory at a time. Your kingdom is shaped through characters, relationships and decisions. Choose who to trust. Arrange marriages. Appoint your council. Respond to rivals. Secure your succession. Manage the crown. Decide when to fight and when to negotiate. Every choice can affect your family and kingdom years later. PLAY ANYWHERE Atheling is a single-player history game designed for phones and built to work offline. No account. No ads. No multiplayer. No daily rewards. No timers. No internet connection required. Play for a few minutes or rule for generations. History has already happened once. This time, it's up to you. The first campaign is free with unlimited replays. Unlock the remaining campaigns, sandbox mode and future campaigns with a single lifetime purchase.

Screenshots

Live Through Time4 screens
Atheling4 screens

Verdict

The call

Live Through Time and Atheling are too close to call on the numbers: across 6 compared parameters — price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases among them — neither pulls far enough ahead to decide it. What separates them is feature set and interface, not measurable difference.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Live Through Time sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $10.99 per month and Atheling sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 16, 2026 and October 26, 2026 respectively.

ScorecardNo meaningful differences
Live Through Time versus Atheling: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLive Through TimeAtheling
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings2 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysEvery 4 days
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPod
Requires iOS15.015.0
Further details — not scored
Size37 MB16 MB
Age rating12+17+
DeveloperMark LloydDiem Limited

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Live Through Time

Subscriptions1
  • Architect$10.991 Month
One-time2
  • 500 Bonus Turns$5.49
  • 1,000 Bonus Turns$7.99
1 purchases

Atheling

One-time1
  • Atheling Full Game$5.99

Questions

Is Live Through Time free?
Live Through Time is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Atheling free?
Atheling is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Live Through Time or Atheling have ads?
Neither Live Through Time nor Atheling shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Live Through Time or Atheling?
Live Through Time ships an update every 4 days, and Atheling every 4 days. Most recently, Live Through Time was updated on October 16, 2026 and Atheling on October 26, 2026.

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