Top 10 Time Travel Games - with Tom Vasel

0:08 Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vassal. Welcome to the Dice Tower. And today we're talking about my top 10 favorite time traveling board and card games. Time travel is pretty much impossible to do properly. I mean, look at every time travel movie. I love them, but how many flaws do they have in them? You just have to kind of ignore those flaws and just go with it. And the same thing is with board game. How do you make a time travel board game? One of the first board games I ever reviewed was a game based on time travel, Time Control, and it was a pretty atrociously bad game. So, that kind of it's tricky. So, let's see if we can find 10 and we'll jump into that, my 10 favorite time travel games. Number 10 is Chrononauts. Now, Chrononauts is a game that I don't particularly love as a game. This is from Looney Labs who are best known for Flux.

0:59 But I have to give Chrononauts a thing and and a nod, and the reason it's on this list is because it has a lot of fun with time travel. You get to where Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, was shot. There's a bunch of cards out there, and that card can be flipped over where he was not shot. And sometimes these cards are lynchpins, and when they get flipped over, they will flip over other things cuz if this event happened, then this event never even had a chance to happen. And I find stuff like that really interesting, and it's a I find that super fun. The rest of the game is like, collect these three things and you win. Whatever. And that's why I don't love the game, but I love the concept of Chrononauts a lot. much worth checking, and they've actually made specific versions of Chrononauts, um themed versions, but the original one is the one I find the most interesting.

1:45 Number nine is a game called Time Pirates. Now, this is time travel in the sense of I'm moving to this part of the board which is in a different time than that part of the board. And you're time pirates. This is from Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum, published from Rio Grande Games. And this you're just you are well, pirates going from spot to spot collecting artifacts. Might it sound like it could have been called Time Bandits? Um but uh here it's it's a game that's not particularly loved, but and it's a fairly old game. It came out 2000, so it's 26 years old at this point in time. And it's a basic set collection game. But this is one I would love to see a remake of and I think fits on my list. The next one we have is Steam Time. This is from Rudiger Dorn and Cosmos. And this is another one. It's the year 1899 in this game and strange phenomena are being found in places like Stonehenge and the pyramids of of Egypt. Time goes crazy and the new crystals come in. So you're building these big dirigibles and you're going around from spot to spot collecting stuff.

2:46 The time travel part here and the time theme is almost a uh a a setting more so than mechanism of the game. Like I said, time travel is really hard to do in a game, but it's worth checking out. That is Steam Time. Then we have Groundhog Day the game. Well, big shock, Groundhog Day is a game about time travel where this man relives the same day over and over again. This is from Funko Games and the designers Peter Lee and Prospero Hall. This was a cooperative game as you're living this day over and over again. You're playing cards quickly and in order without communicating other players before time runs out and you get to do it over and over again before your time goes out. So this actually kind of has time travel. You're going back in time and doing things over and over again. And it's based on a movie which automatically might make you think, "Hey, this game ain't great." But it's not bad.

3:40 Groundhog Day the game. Definitely check it out. Next we have Anachrony. Now Anachrony, of all the games that are on my list here, this is number six. This might be the best or one of the best games as an as a gaming mechanism. This is a big giant game going on. Earth What's the year in this? The 26th century. You got time, don't worry. But Earth is going to suffer from an explosion that's going to kill most of everybody else and or did it did have an explosion. You are now surviving humans and you're remaking Earth in your shape. And there's all sorts of pieces. It's a big complicated worker placement game from Mindclash Games designed by David Turczi. But one of the aspects in this game is you can be jump to the future multiple times over the course of this game and borrow resources from yourself, which you then need to have when you get to the future so you can give them to yourself in the past.

4:34 This definitely gave me a crisis of thought as in time travel is just debt time travel. When I borrow money, I'm saying future time will handle that. Current time is good. You got this future time. Future time is like, what on Earth, past time, you fool? So, that's really what it is. It's more more of a debt thing than anything else, but it uses the time travel as a mechanism to get there. Number five is an abstract style game called That Time You Killed Me. You and your opponent are rival time travelers trying to erase each other from history. So, since you're the one guy who invented time travel, I need to prove that. I need to go into past and kill you. And so this game has three boards. Uh I think it's present, past, and future and you're jumping your piece around. Very abstract. It also has almost a campaign where you add new things. There's just different ways to jump to the past and I can go back here then jump to the future and get you. So, it's very mind warpy and bendy and abstract. Think of almost as a three-dimensional chess type game to it.

5:37 A lot of cool ideas in it. That Time You Killed Me, my number five. Number four is one of the Unlocks. Now, the Unlock series is a series of games in which is a an escape room game and uses an app and a deck of cards. And one of them called well, Timeless Adventures has three different escape rooms in it and one of them is called Lost in the Chrono Warp. And Lost in the Chrono Warp is one of my favorite of these I I like the Unlock series as a general course. I don't love all of them, but I like them and this is one of my favorite, Lost in the Chrono Warp. So, if you like this idea of time and going back and forth in time, that's what this one's about, this particular mission. And so, you'll find jumping back and forth in time. So, that's an Unlock Timeless Adventures.

6:22 Number three is an older game. Um, I guess it's only 14 years old, but Legacy Gears of Time from Floodgate Games designed by Ben Harkins. Um, and Ben has done a bunch of different games, but this is probably the one he's most known for. Now, he basically runs Floodgate Games, but this is a game a strategic game where you are inventing things and if I invent something in the past that allows me to do something in the future. So, think of it almost as a civilization game, but about going back in time and inventing this which then allows you to do this or it gets you things in the past will help you do things in the future and there's a lot of back and forth time to this. It's a bit alternate timeline-esque, almost like Chrononauts like I mentioned at the beginning, but with a much better gameplay to it.

7:07 That's Legacy Gears of Time. Number two is Time Stories. So, Time Stories is a game that's all about time. Uh, and you're in this game, you go through a mission, you are sent in this machine to a period somewhere in time. You go through and at some point the mission ends and you go back and you play it again like Groundhog Day. Time Stories is a game that I very much waffle on. I I have my final rating of it is not particularly high, but that's because there was an overarching story with all these different modules and the modules seemingly did not get better. They In fact, the the last few are pretty bad. But take that out of the equation. Just buying the box Time Stories and playing that and a couple of the first scenarios is an amazing experience. It's so fun because you're like you run down the hall and you're like go that way.

7:59 Nope, not that way. Oh, there's that person. Not talking to them this time. And while in you know, the real Groundhog Day movies and things like that, they sequence them down to bits because you would get bored living that whole day over and over again. This game in its best versions only has you go through the day a few times, but it's really interesting how much time you're spending. I It's just really cool game on my list, Time Stories. And number one is another themed game based on intellectual property and that is Back to the Future Back in Time. Now, keep note of this because there are a lot of Back to the Future games. So, get the right name on this one, Back to the Future Back in Time. And in this one, much of the the game takes place in 1950 time 55. It's based on the first movie and you're in a time paradox and you're running around here cooperatively trying to get George and Lorraine to fall in love so that your picture does not disappear. And then get that DeLorean working with Doc Brown to get back to the future.

8:59 I think this game is fantastic. If you like cooperative games like Pandemic or Forbidden Island Forbidden Desert, this one's right up your alley. Fun pieces, very strong theme. If you like the movie, this really comes out. This is the best It's my number one of the time travel games, but it is also my number one Back to the Future game and of like I said, of which there's quite a few. It's a movie I very much enjoy and I think this game, another one from Funko Games designed by Prospero Hall Brian Kirk, comes to life I think incredibly well. So, those are my top 10 time travel games. What are yours? Let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for watching everybody. I'm Tom Vasel and this is the Dice Tower. In the future.

9:45 Hey everybody, thanks for watching another video from the Dice Tower. Hey, you want to learn more about us, communicate with us? We have a Facebook group, we have a Discord channel, lots of different ways to get involved with the Dice Tower. You can find that in our link tree link below. So, just click that and it will take you and you can communicate with us on Facebook, join our Facebook groups. There's a lots of cool things that you can find and become part of the Dice Tower. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Tom Vasel.