In class this past week we began playing the board game T.I.M.E. stories. This game has far exceeded my expectations, and while it is at first difficult to grasp, it does become easier to understand as you play. The most difficult part of T.I.M.E. Stories so far (we are continuing the game next week, and the box is designed to allow players to save their game, which is an extremely cool feature) has been the limited amount of time you receive when starting your mission. This is not something you can really avoid or strategize around because the amount of time you lose each turn is determined by chance via a dice roll. However instead of losing the game once you run out of time, the game simply re-sets and forces your team to go back through previous steps with clues in your mind as to how to complete the mission more efficiently. Overall it has a really unique take, but is incredibly frustrating, since the group loses so much progress.

The leadership topics covered in this game are attention to detail, conveying information/collaboration, and ambiguity, amongst others. The attention to detail aspects come up in the game play. Players must pay close attention the clues they are provided and the details within each clue because once time runs out you lose a lot of the information you learned. Additionally only the players on the designated spaces are able to read the clues in their entirety, and as a result they must be able to convey that information to other players so that the team stays on the same page. Lastly, the game is extremely ambiguous because each destination/room you choose has its own set of unknown outcomes. Each player has to make choices on their own and ultimately each choice can have a major impact on the team. The qualities are important in leadership, because good leaders must pay attention to cues from their team members, and be extremely organized and detail oriented in order to ensure success for their teams. Additionally leaders have to be able to convey their ideas to others, so that people can join and understand the groups overall goals. Lastly, a good leader must be comfortable with ambiguity and change; leaders often prepare for one thing and end up dealing with something entirely different, so they must be able to adapt.

I would recommend this game to anyone who loves escape rooms or adventure/mystery stories. It has a really similar feel to an escape room in that you are trying to piece together clues, it can only be played once per story, and that there are a lot of unknown components that reveal themselves to players as they go. The game also does a great job of immersing players in the story and theme, similarly to an escape room. I would recommend this game to my friend Brooke, she is my escape room buddy and we have done over 30 rooms together. The game has a lot of elements that I explained above that she would definitely enjoy!