Pendulum Review - What lies beneath the sands of time?

so chances are that if you're watching this video you might already kind of know what's up with pendulum it's an ambitious new stonemeyer game that's set in a fantasy world and instead of restricting you based off of turns you're restricted by the very power of time itself as marked by these little sand timers here which are effectively the same things you kept on stealing from your grandma's pictionary set but we're going to set these aside for the moment because to really understand pendulum you gotta ask yourself besides the real-time aspect really what is this game at its core pendulum is a worker placement and resource conversion game throughout four rounds players place workers in locations which will either grant goods of three different colors points of three different colors or little purple chiclets used to represent boats though don't worry you don't actually vote on anything these are theoretical abstract votes which somehow feels a little too real initially you have two workers a regular and a special grande worker who is able to be placed at locations where workers are already at the majority of action spaces cost the yellow resource gold to activate and give you resources based on four different columns on your player board which can be enhanced through conquering though don't worry you don't actually conquer other player stuff these are theoretical abstract conquer cards from a market paid for with the red military cubes and can be rotated and assigned to the appropriate column generating more red yellow or blue cubes red yellow or blue points or more theoretical abstract votes and the last big element you have control of is the cards in your hand which are largely made up of the four cards specific to your character and can be played to get more workers more resources rescue workers locked in locations or some slightly more tricky stuff player cards can be bounced back into your hand and played again usually by spending five blue cultured cubes but don't worry you don't actually have to worry about the political exchange of competing cultures and theoretical abstract conquered terrains these are just theoretical abstract blue culture cubes you get the idea so it's a game of resource management you get the colored cubes in order to more efficiently take your actions and then you use those actions to get the colored points the catch is like i said earlier that you aren't governed by turns you're governed by time so all of the worker placement locations in the game are separated into these three colored sections and each of those sections has two rows and one of those rows is going to be currently occupied by a timer and those timers correspond to 3 minutes 2 minutes or 0.75 minutes well 45 seconds for those keeping score and being that there's no turns players can freely assign their dudes to available locations obeying certain restrictions you can only assign or move from locations in rows where the timer is not and you can only resolve actions in sections where the timer is and what might not be immediately obvious is that a timer can just sit there at a time and that's not inherently breaking the game or anything it just means that workers can't be added to or taken from the row where the timer is and the workers who are in the other row can't resolve any of their actions because the timer is not so at any time any player can take a timer that has run out flip it upside down and place it on the other row in its section meaning the once locked locked-in dudes can be moved and the newly locked-in dudes can activate now the purple three-minute timer which holds back the juiciest of actions is special because it has three time tokens and upon its initial round starting flip and two subsequent flips you'll be knocking away those time tokens and once all three are knocked off the board a council is called and timers can no longer be flipped for the round players resolve any remaining actions that they can then see who had the most votes to determine who gets bonuses and first pick of special cards which could be new reusable cards in hand one-time effects or upgrading workers to more powerful grande workers that can be placed in worker locations where there are already workers and then a new round begins and that's pretty much it so let's talk about end game after the fourth council the game ends and the winner is determined based on whoever managed to get all of their point rows into the positive section of their board with tiebreakers based on overshooting if multiple people made it or by closest to making it if nobody did scoring is kind of intriguing but also feels kind of needlessly complex the best way to think of it is like there's a point that in three different colors which change based off of your character and you need to be in the black on all three colors to win oh and you need to get this big bad shiny daddy at least once in the game for the fourth single point row this is the last twist of pendulum which i actually thought was pretty clever in that each round there's going to be a legendary achievement card on display where people can pay cubes or chiclets to get some reward likely it's going to be more points or cubes or chiclets or a territory card but if no one else has claimed it this round you can get the dope metal legendary achievement token adding that point to your track signifying that you can focus the rest of the game on your red yellow blue efficiency engine to your heart's content and that's the game here's the deal with pendulum if we are looking at this just as the central gimmick a turnless worker placement game where time itself is a resource that you have to manage they pull it off the system is competently designed adding pressure to your actions but not in such a way that it feels like a frantic mad dash to the best spots it's strategic and has decent engine building and a unique tempo unlike anything else on the market i just wish the game underneath weren't so bland this is an abstract color based efficiency engine and that's okay it feels really good to be efficient at this game but there's no dramatic modular elements or adaptive strategies to employ you just more or less try to get better at playing the game the same way every time yes you can cultivate more production of different resources or your asymmetric powers through your cards may make production to some cubes or points or votes slightly different but it's all about shuffling quantities and colors so it feels sort of like an artificial asymmetry and don't get me wrong i like abstract games but for the housing the polish the laboriously detailed theme it creates a disparity that emphasizes just how narrow the game is and adding a temporal element puts you under such pressure that any pretense of theme is thrown completely to the wayside so no matter how cool looking big daddy snirpent or mama mayham are it's just all cubes and colors and time and speaking of time no matter how much stonemeyer seems to be building this as a contrast to existing real-time games out there this is still a game where thinking fast means you'll do better you'll feel the pressure of time on every action and as a result of trying to slip a meeple in before sand runs out you'll inevitably rock a player board knock down a timer or forget some aspect to play if you flat out don't like real-time games i don't think this is going to change your mind yes there's a sort of hedging your bets by including a non-timer variant for the game but if you strip out the real-time element i think you're missing out on the major thing that makes this game special in the first place and would be better off by playing a different game so here are my takeaways i played this game several times now and i look forward to playing it more but i like real-time games and a large part of the fun that i have with this game is academic i like seeing weird stuff work in clever ways so if the real-time aspect is compelling on its own or the combination of real-time and worker placement is enough of a drive for you just to see it operate and actually function then yeah this is going to do it for you but by the standard of modern engine building games or interesting themes or compelling and varied strategy it's just okay i do think the game is really well suited to solo it elegantly shifts around occupied spaces and flips unused timers based on cards that are drawn every time you remove one of your workers it makes it a bit more measured and gives you more room to breathe making it different and a bit more contemplative of an experience which i enjoyed about as much as i did multiplayer ultimately this is a decent game with a really cool gimmick and the fact that it even works is an achievement in and of itself but the pool of people who are going to want to play a fantasy themed real time abstract strategy cube pusher is already pretty small and even i have some concerns about replayability wearing pretty thin pendulum is an ambitious game and it's certainly the weirdest though far from my least favorite game in the stonemeyer catalog but it is a very hard to recommend game and that is our review thank you so much for watching i've been jack for the cardboard herald if you enjoyed this video we have all kinds of other reviews interviews and recommendations via writing podcasts and video here on our channel and website cardboardherald.com our content is audience supported so if you want to show your support please visit our patreon thank you so much for watching this has been the cardboard herald