This past week we played T.I.M.E Stories in class. It was quite a fun game. The story is very intriguing, but I’m unsure of how it will eventually resolve, as I don’t think we’ve gotten very far before the end of class. The gameplay aspect I liked the most was resetting the time. It reminds me of some of my favorite roguelike video games, Risk of Rain 2 and Hades, in that while you lose some of your progress, the most valuable thing carrying over is your learned knowledge of the game. I can’t wait to run it back next week.
The most difficult aspect of playing the game was certainly learning the basics of how to play. There’s many moving parts and when playing it for the first time, it’s very overwhelming. Now having gotten through a full cycle of the game, I’m quite sure that I understand how to play the game properly. An aspect of the game I’m still learning is combat. In that first cycle, I never had to enter into combat, but even at opportunities where I could, from my understanding, I would’ve lost very badly and been killed/knocked out. One aspect I do not like is the skill checks. Every so often a location would have a challenge to beat, but out of the 4 or so challenges that I’ve encountered, my character has not had any skill points in that area being checked. That led to my group and I having to spend even more time at a location that might not even have been worth it.
It’s very easy to see and understand how this game ties into leadership. To start, the game requires someone to be the “Time Captain”, an in-game leader that helps facilitate the game to run smoothly. Next, someone has to keep track of all of the information that’s discovered to make sure that no little detail is left unremembered. A potential outlet for leadership for this game could be role-playing. It’s not required by any means and would have little effect on the overall flow of the game, but someone could lead a group into that.