T.I.M.E Stories Review by : Garry Flatt
T.I.M.E Stories is a tabletop game that was created by Space Cowboys and published by Asmodee. The company, Space Cowboys is relatively new to the table top industry, releasing their first hit game, Splendor, in 2014. A year later they released T.I.M.E Stories, one of the best tabletop games of 2015.
T.I.M.E Stories is difficult to describe without spoiling too much, but I will try not to discuss any spoilers,I will speak of the game play, components, and theme in a general context. The idea behind the game is that players are members of a government agency which regulates the use of time travel. One function of this is to prevent temporal fluxes from occurring. Temporal fluxes occur because people time travel and change moments in history. To prevent these temporal fluxes, the players occupy the bodies of characters from the time period they are traveling to. These characters are known as receptacles and are used because these people have little to no impact on the time line. This is the general premise behind the game. The way time travel is done in gameplay mechanics is each time period is a different case. In the base set, one case is included called the Asylum. At the time of writing this review there are two other cases in the form of expansions, the Marcy Case and the Prophecy of Dragons. Each case takes place at a different point in time or an alternate time line all together. In general, the components are all very generic and sterile because the tokens and dice are used for multiple things. For instance, in one game a set of tokens may be used to represent ammo, in the next, health kits. The board is stark white with very little detail just enough to outline where cards will be placed. The cards are specific to each case so I will not go into much detail, only to say that the artwork is amazing and unique across all the cases. Component wise, the insert is made to keep your game pieces well organized, having a spot for everything and a way in which to store your game if you need to “save” your game for future sessions.
Let’s discuss gameplay. In general, the gameplay and rules described in the rulebook are very vague and rightfully so... some rules change based on each case, but those changes are outlined in each expansion. To begin, the team is given a certain amount of Time Units, or TU, in which to solve the case and stop the temporal flux from occurring. Each action that the team performs causes TU to be spent. Once TU reaches zero the team has failed and is pulled back to base to start the case over again with the information they have gathered and, occasionally, some items. The team will accomplish the goal in each case by following a basic turn structure. The way a turn works is when you first arrive at a location you set out the cards of that location forming a panoramic view of the room. Each player then places their player marker on the location they want to explore. Each player picks up the location card they are on and reads it to themselves. After reading the card, the player must tell everyone else, in their own words what is happening at their location according to the card. The card could offer clues, contain a puzzle, or a confrontation that the player at that location has to solve. After each player has described what is occurring at their location, the team will spend one TU and then take an action. Actions could be any one of the following: moving your token to a different location in the panoramic, making a roll of the dice to solve confrontations, or do nothing. To solve the confrontations a player must roll dice equal to the stat that is being tested also a number of tokens must be place equal to what the card states. This stat varies depending, not only on the action being taken, but also the case. After the dice are rolled the player counts up any star burst and removes that many tokens from the challenge. There are various tokens and some are more dangerous than others but for this review I will just describe a very basic test. After a location is explored, and before any TU is spent, the team can decide to move to a new panoramic location, this will require rolling the time dice, spending the number of TU shown there, and opening a new location of the teams choosing. The turn structure continues like this until the players either run out of TU, a card tells the players to read one of the various endings, or if all players die.
When death of failure occurs, the game is reset and the players keep the knowledge they have obtained and a few items that have a special symbol on them. Everything else is returned as it was when the team started the game. The gameplay overview here is not as in depth as the rule book.
Overall, this game is fantastic! Each new case gives you a different feel and a different story that is not only self-contained, but adds to an overarching story. The gameplay is very easy to pick up and
understand and the new rules that are added based on new cases (expansions) are good. Now some of
the rules are very vague leaving the players to figure out what they mean however this was due to not
wanting to spoil the story and give specific examples of gameplay in the rule book. In the many play
throughs of the game I have had, I have not felt the rules were too vague and the people I have shown
the game feel the same. One of the biggest concerns the tabletop community have with this game is the fact that it tells a story and that once you know that story you have used up that case. I however do not feel this way. I have replayed the first case several times in many different roles. I have run a group of friends through the story working as sort of a DM, explaining the rules to them and I have played through with another group of friends as part of the story working through it with them but not giving hints to the game. Also to counter most points others have made, the base game is $40 and meant for 4 players. My first run through took 4 hours of straight gameplay. So you are looking at $10 an hour for 4 players. That is less money than it costs to go see a movie. Additional cases are running around $20 and last about 4 hours as well. I believe, even if you just play each story once, you are getting your money’s worth. I feel this tabletop game has captured the feel of three different areas of gaming. It combines the feel of a tabletop game, a pen and paper RPG, and a video game. Every time I have played this game, I have enjoyed it. I would highly recommend T.I.M.E. Stories to anyone, even groups who do not play tabletop games but enjoy pen and paper RPGs or video games. While there are a few flaws, I think this game is well worth checking out and definitely deserved being one of the best games of 2015.
