Background
Time Stories is an engrossing, puzzle-style cooperative game. Players take on the roles of authorities travelling to a different place and time to solve a mystery and avoid some catastrophic event. It behaves in a manner similar to a choose-your-own-adventure book. Players use a stack of ordered cards to slowly reveal the action over time, based on choices they make.
Time is represented by a movement marker on a track. There are combat sessions and other challenges that involve dice rolls. If the mystery is not solved before time runs out, things reboot and you try again with slight variations.
Because the game takes hours to play, the box insert was designed to support preserving your game state for a future session. The insert contains slots to store the status of the time marker and current cards, for example.
This game is very innovative. Because of its nature, it is a one-off. You would probably not replay a scenario. Since it is not destructive, the game can be replayed by a new group of players. By purchasing new expansions, which include new decks of cards, you can play again with exciting, new scenarios set in other places and times.
Rose the Ranger and Bitzy the Bard played the game over several evenings and have very differing opinions.
The duel is on!
RR: Well, that was a boring waste of time.
BB: What do you mean? I loved it! It was so immersive and such a challenge to solve the puzzle!
RR: But that’s exactly the problem. I hated having to restart the scenario and redo what we already did. We knew the answer but a few bad dice rolls and you have to restart from scratch. It was torture.
BB: We didn’t have to finish in that session. We could pick it up again later.
RR: But then we would forget if we didn’t take good notes. It was frustrating if you didn’t play all at once which we couldn’t do.
BB: I agree with that. I know it required a lot of patience, but sometimes you read mystery novels that take a long time to reveal the mystery.
RR: That’s different. You are not forced to reread the same stuff in a murder mystery! *Eye Roll*
BB: Well, I admit the box insert did not work out. Look at how that thin plastic got cracked and they made the sections too shallow to hold all the pieces.
RR: Massive fail there. And you can only play it one time? What’s with that? That’s a waste of money.
BB: To be fair, we spend a lot more money of movies and other event-type activities. That is how you have to think about this. It’s an event that you experience.
RR: Ok well that makes sense.
BB: So what can we do to fix the game?
RR: Mom, we can’t change the rules.
BB: I paid for it and it’s my game. I can change the rules all I want.
RR. Ok then. Stop the restart from the beginning. Let’s take precise notes and restart at a point in the game that we choose. We’ll set a save state like we do in one of our Nancy Drew PC games.
BB: Great idea! And I can try to make a custom box insert to replace the crummy one. Let’s try the expansion on a weekend when we know we’ll have a big block of time to devote to playing it. Sound good?
RR: Sounds great! Game on!
BB: I’ll make nachos!
