Playing with time

I'm continuing to listen to the old episodes of Game On! with Cody and John. Last week I listened to Episode #31, featuring an interview with Andrew Looney -- the cofounder of the game company Looney Labs. The interview discussed several games, but I was especially intrigued by Chrononauts. I had recently received a $25 Amazon certificate (from a publisher), and the game was on sale at Amazon for $18.40, so I ordered it. It arrived today, and Patrick, Andrew and I played four games.

The game was originally published in 2000, but the edition I bought is from 2009. It starts with a set of 32 cards representing important world events laid out in chronological order -- starting with the Lincoln Assassination (in 1865) and ending with the Columbine High School Massacre (in 1999). Players represent time travellers attempting to change the timeline. Each player randomly draws a card describing the two events that must be changed and the one that must be preserved in order to set the timeline so they can return home. For example, one card (for a time traveller named Yuri) requires the player to (1) change history so that a cosmonaut (not an American astronaut) is the first to orbit the moon in 1969, (2) change history so that Communism re-invents itself in 1991, rather than having the Berline Wall fall and (3) make sure that the Oklahoma City Bombing continues to occur in 1995.

How is this accomplished? Players draw and play cards, some of which include the ability to "flip" certain events. For example, some cards allow a player to prevent or complete an assasination. Yuri can use these cards to change history so that Kennedy is only wounded or Reagan is killed. These events then "ripple" throughout the timeline, as indicated on the cards. Saving Kennedy will slow the Apollo Program enough to prevent the Apollo landing in 1969. It will also prevent RFK and MLK from being killed. The Apollo landing can also be sidetracked by playing a sabatoge card to explode Sputnik. Of course that will ripple as well, in different ways.

Players can also win the game by collecting a list (that differs from player-to-player) of particular artifacts from the past and future ... everything from a live dinosaur to a Beatles reunion album (which will only exist if someone stops John Lennon from being killed). Looney Labs has placed the rules online, for those curious about more details.

We had a good time with the game. Both boys liked it. (Andrew and Patrick each won twice.) Despite the serious nature of some of the cards, the game shows a lot of humor. Several cards have blurbs on them that play upon the theme. For example, the "John Lennon Nearly Killed" card says that a "mysterious hero intervenes in street attack on rock star, then disappears into Central Park." My favorite is the "Titanic Avoids Iceberg" card's blurb -- "We almost hit that." The main flaw that I see in the game is that in 90% of the turns that I took today, I didn't have any cards that would move the timeline in my favor. Thus, I spent most of my time asking, "which of these plays is most likely to help someone else?" I don't know if this was bad luck, bad play or bad game design, but it knocks the game down a couple of ratings points.

Looney Labs has published a couple of expansions. Early American Chrononauts covers America from 1760-1916, and The Gore Years extends the timeline to 2008.