Sunday, November 8, 2015

T.I.M.E. Stories:


Note: This post is MOSTLY spoiler free and will not give away and major story elements that can't be gotten of the box of advertising.

Today I finally got to play TIME stories. A cooperative, heavily thematic, story telling game that has bee likened to A "point & click" adventure game.

I guess it is like, and I like games like that, such as King' Quest, and Gabriel Knight on the PC. TIME stories to me is one of the more innovative games out right now and it's closest cousin would be Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. There are lots of differences though. For starters, you are part of a time traveling peace keeping organization designed to prevent bad things from happening in time (and other versions of time) that other time travelers are creating.

In the game you get one scenario and the base game components. The components like the board and chits will be used in every scenario but once completed, the base scenario in the game is done and loses its replay value. To me, that is OK as Space Cowboys, the producers of this fine game, already have a new scenario out called "The Marcy Case" and plans for several others.

There is some discussion about the cost of the game but I can tell you, I have already found my value in the base game alone. Today we did three runs. A run is a single full play of the game. The concept is allot like the movie Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise where he relives the events, over and over, getting better at predicting them every time as he experiments with ways to overcome the objectives.

Thus, in your first run of TIME stories, unless you are incredibly lucky or simply way better at solving mysteries than the average gamer, you are likely to lose. Mostly likely this is by running out of time units.

When you travel in time in this game you occupy a vessel, a person of interest to the story, who you then use to solve the mystery.  You visit locations as a group  (of 2-4 players) and go to separate places within those locations. In the base game, you are investigating an Asylum circa 1921. I won't tell you why as that is part of the story line.

When you explore a location you get a panorama of the place and as card the describes the scene. This is very immersive. I play (minor-minor spoiler) Marie Bertholet, and lovely patients that suffers from Exotomania and thinks everyone is in love with her (which grants her a special ability).


 The rest of the cast of characters are equally interesting and the story of the asylum is very intriguing. You just have to know what is happening, which leads you to take more runs through the scenario. In the three runs we played we did not succeed but we could tell were were close.  The problem was we ran out of time. This leads to a specific ending that I will not spoil.

For me, this game is well worth the cost of the main box and additional scenarios. We were all so engaged in the game we did not want to quit but time ran out for us! The good news, is the game has a built in save mechanism that allows you to save any progress you have.

I will absolutely be buying every module that comes out with this game and look forward to playing The Marcy Case as well, as soon as we finish the asylum.

This is, to me, a must buy for gamers that like immersive, story driven, thematic cooperative games with puzzle solving elements.

This is a "do not buy" of you do not like the things I just mentioned above or play solo, or with two players. The game is best suited for play with 3-4 people. The two player game simply has you playing more than one character which defeats the purpose of the immersive play with your special vessel.


Monday, November 2, 2015

Thunderbirds Episode 1 Set up and start





Join me as I do a play through of the newly released Kickstarter game "Thunderbirds". 

Also, check out Tube Tables Guild on Boardgamegeek and go to www.Dougmysticeye.com where you can check stuff out and read my gaming blog.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

A Touch of Evil Play 2 Episode 1





If you are still jonesing after my ATOE play through Crazy Bear, Brian has started another one. It is awesome so enjoy.