Time Stories is a game where you and a group of people go back in time and try and solve a puzzle to avoid a “temporal rift” (at least I think that was the term). I thought I was going to hate this game because I generally hate games that heavily on storytelling or immersion. I generally find it really hard to get into these kinds of board games. However, I really enjoyed this game and thought it was one of the better games we played throughout the semester. The hardest part of the game is definitely the puzzles! Everyone in your group has to really be focused while going throughout the story because each person will be interacting with different “panels” and only they are going to pick up the panel and actually look at it; they then will be summarizing the panel to the rest of the group. If there are any visual clues one person in your group may have overlooked then your group may be extremely lost and probably won’t solve the puzzle in time. Sam was the person in our group that went to the panel that had the primary clue in the first room. Thankfully, she was paying attention and wrote down the symbols on the panel, if she wouldn’t have done that our team wouldn’t have completed the mission. Leadership in this game is very group focused. You will need to effectively communicate with your team information that they can’t see which can be very challenging! Also, there is individual responsibility because all group members need to be taking extensive notes throughout the game to make sense of certain clues or solve riddles. I think my brother Justin would love this game because he generally likes games with a strong theme and puzzles.

~ Ryan Estep