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Trouble on the Tempus is a game about travelling through the depths of space in a lovely spaceship … as it catches fire and the electronics explode and it falls apart around you. You're pretty much doomed. Luckily you're in a time machine, part of an exploratory mission to test the latest time traversing technology, but you pushed the ship too far and things have gone horribly wrong.
Fortunately, as mentioned, the Tempus is a time machine. Your science officers have jury-rigged it to perform very localised jumps of the crew, allowing you to transport yourselves back to a time when you were not about to explode hoping that if you can gather enough information about the future you may be able to prevent the your ultimate destruction.
Of course it's not a perfect system, if you cause too many paradoxes the ship may find itself trapped in a fate much worse than exploding in the depth of space, if such a thing is possible.
Trouble on the Tempus is a co-operative game of disaster management where the players must prevent fires, electrical faults, and mechanical failures, as they work to fix the hyperdrive of the Tempus so they can power themselves home. Tragically this is a truly impossible task so the players will have no choice but to engage the ships time drive, resetting the board to the way it was at the start of the game so the players can try again with the added knowledge of when and where the disasters will appear.
If you can repeat the timeline enough, collecting the right equipment and positioning yourselves to pre-empt the disasters as they happen, you should be able to predict enough rounds to fix the hyper-drive and win the game. However, each time you time travel you cause a paradox, and the difficulty of the game can be adjusted by how many paradox's you can cause before reality collapses in on itself.
—description from the designer
- Fresh time-loop mechanic in a co-op space game
- Strategic planning with knowledge of the future
- Potential complexity for new players
- Space coop with time-reset mechanics
- Spaceship voyage with time-drive twist
- High-concept sci-fi with paradox-resolving loops
- Pandemic with time-shift twist
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Crew management and base defense — Coordinate crew and resources to survive threats.
- Paradox cards — Paradoxes introduce twists that spice the deck and play.
- Seven lanes/territory interaction — Multiple battle aspects requiring coordination across spaces.
- Time drive reset — Use the Tempest to reset the scenario and replay with knowledge.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's a solo game. We're breaking that just a first one. It is a solo game.
- Time Trooper is absolutely mega fun.
- The ship that you're on will break and you will die. But there's a trick to this. The ship can time-drive and reset.
- You are the gods. You are one of the gods.
- Magnets and games is great.
References (from this video)
- Fresh take on cooperative crisis games with time travel mechanics that reward memory and planning.
- Clear, quick-to-teach rules that scale reasonably well and are accessible for non-gamers.
- Strong thematic cohesion; the time paradox engine feels thematic and exciting.
- Compact, modular scenario setup with replayability from different hyperdrive cards and paradox cards.
- Production feel communicates ship layout and blueprints effectively even in a prototype state.
- Two-player scaling can be brutal or require two characters per player to feel balanced.
- Prototype art and components may change in final production.
- Paradox deck can introduce chaotic outcomes that may frustrate players seeking a steady puzzle.
- Long-term scaling and depth beyond two players remain somewhat unproven.
- time travel paradox, ship-wide crisis management, teamwork under pressure
- A crew aboard the spaceship Tempest that must survive crises while traveling in space and navigating time loops
- cooperative, scenario-driven with memory of past days via time resets
- Pandemic
- Horrified
- Nemesis
- FTL
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Cooperative Actions — Crew members coordinate actions to repair systems, manage fires, and mitigate damage across the ship.
- cooperative crisis management — Crew members coordinate actions to repair systems, manage fires, and mitigate damage across the ship.
- deck-building / scenario setup — At the start, players build a scenario-driven crisis deck; the end-of-round cards reveal what happened.
- event-based hazards on deck — Hazards (fires, hull breaches, etc.) are drawn as the round ends and persist or recur in future timelines.
- Events — Hazards (fires, hull breaches, etc.) are drawn as the round ends and persist or recur in future timelines.
- per-room map with discrete powers — The ship map is divided into rooms; each room provides specific powers to fix issues or move items.
- time travel / time loop — Players reset to a previous point with knowledge of past events; paradox cards are added to the deck to alter future rounds.
- win condition = repair hyperdrive — The hyperdrive must be fixed to win; additional damage and hazards influence the path and difficulty.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- The rules are incredibly well written by the way
- it's a really solid game.
- massively thematic actually.
- you stack the deck like you would do in the pandemic deck