Well having totally mashed up four time travelling films and tv series to make a blog post title that is a complete disaster this post can only get better right? Wrong!

Yesterday as the Rock would say “finally! T.I.M.E. Stories has hit the table!”

I’m going to give a spoiler warning just in case, and I’m bound to, do disclose spoilers for the games first scenario/mission Asylum. 

So Jonathan, Will, Lucia and I gathered to act as time agents or whatever the game calls us. Whilst Jeff very kindly came along to act as GM/DM for the game. Jeff had played this scenario before. Apparently three times! For the rest of us this was the first time we had ever played the game.

My first recepticle was Vasil, who had a little addiction problem with “nose candy”. Which he apparently had managed to hide three vials of from the screws. And was now able during my control of him to use these vials to roll extra dice, or heal other players! But if he ran out took a permanent life point hit. 

All the recepticles had their strengths and abilities. At the start you are choosing at random which one you want to play, you have no idea which will be useful in the mission ahead. So you go with the one you like the look of. 

The game is fun. I thought there was going to be more puzzles. It was the impression I got from reviews on The Dice Tower. 

In reality it’s more discovering the pieces of the main puzzle, and getting items to unlock more items, and locations.

There are still one or two things we haven’t done in the game. Which means there is a little mystery in the game, that we will never know unless we go back and solve them!

Surprisingly I cracked the main puzzle! Jonathan had been working on it, taking on the mantle of code breaker, making copious notes from the collected clues. But we all put our heads together to solve it when we reached the key point in the game when it needed to be solved to progress.

After that brief flash of glory, I soon became the villain! 

Which I think is unfair it was a majority decision. A naked woman was involved!!! Will went to the toilet at a crucial moment when the vote was taking place. If he’d been there to argue his case. Did I say there was a naked woman? 

Anyway we voted to do as the naked woman requested, which I thought would lead to a final big boss fight. The alternative was to disobey her (she was naked, why would you?) and fight these stone statues that I suspected would come alive, and then fight a big bad.

But no following your pants apparently has bad consequences. I think there might be a life lesson in there somewhere. We instantly failed the mission. No big boss battle! 

Then Will came back from the toilet to face the consequences of his weak bladder. 

See when you look at it in the correct light, the real lesson here is don’t go to the toilet during a key vote. Which leaves my rule of life “do what the attractive naked lady wants” still in place.

Jeff was great as the DM/GM. He had a brilliant wicked cruel streak, planting seeds of doubt at really appropriate moments. I think it really helped having Jeff there, being familiar with the rules etc. It also gave me confidence in playing the game. Going into the game I was worried about the resetting the game part, and how that all worked when you ran out of time. In fact I’d had that concern ever since reading the rules months ago. But between Jeff and actually playing the game that concern vanished.

This is a game that will be dependent on the people you play it with. Have the wrong people and I don’t think the experience will be that enjoyable. We had a fantastic team.

UPDATE: forgot to say how awesome the art work is on the cards. And how clever it is that the backs make up the scene of the room you are in. The art really is stunning.

We had a great time. T.I.M.E. Stories deserved all the praise it has received. If this had been any other month I think I’d be saying this is my game of the month! However as I pointed out in my previous post about game of the year, it’s too early to make that decision. It’s the front runner for sure. And has set a high bar for the likes of Kemet, Scythe, Lunarchitects, and Mechs vs Minions to beat.

I have set a date for The Marcy Case, the second mission and first expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories. So early 2017 hopefully sees the team back together taking on the next challenge.