T.I.M.E Stories, Gold West, and Survive: Escape from Atlantis

Last weekend I went to Game Day, and a curious thing happened — all the games that I played were new to me! This hardly happens as whenever we learn a new game, somebody usually suggests an  old familiar game soon after, so that our brains don’t hurt too much. Or I usually suggest BSG because I do love playing BSG.

First up was T.I.M.E Stories. Whoa! I didn’t expect to enjoy this game so much. There are a few games that have cropped up recently that I consider having “expiration dates.” Pandemic: Legacy is one of them, meaning when once you play through the entire game, that’s it. You can’t play it anymore. T.I.M.E Stories is one such deck-xploration game.  I personally didn’t want to spend money on a board game that I couldn’t play after completing it, but I totally wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to play these games. And lucky for me, I got invited to play T.I.M.E Stories last weekend!

Without any spoilers, in T.I.M.E Stories, you are basically going back into time to solve a mystery. With each “run” into the past, you have a limited number of turns or time to unlock events or rooms to help you solve this mystery. When time runs out, your run ends and you have to start over again at the beginning. When you uncover more clues, it gets easier to get where you need to go, and, once you solve the mystery, there’s an unlikely chance that you’ll play the game again.  My friends and I did two runs, the second time around going in a completely opposite direction, and we were so unsuccessful in both. There is some ambiguity in the rules, which slowed us down a bit, but I think it’s because nobody wanted to consult online for video tutorials for fear of spoilers. The artwork is gorgeous, and I enjoyed the uneasiness of the game in terms of trying to figure out what to do next to solve the mystery, which we haven’t done yet.

Next up, we played a lighter game, but it was new to me as well. My friends and I played Survive: Escape from Atlantis. We added the expansion to the game since there were six of us. Can  I just say this game has the cutest meeples ever?? Besides your player meeples, there are wooden figurines of sea monsters, sharks, whales, dolphins and octopus. It’s easy to learn, and it’s so much fun trying to kill off your competitors.

Players begin with their meeples (of various hidden values) on the center island. You are trying to get your folks to safety from the sinking island to the islands on the corners of the board. You can either swim or take a boat to safety, but as tiles get flipped over on the main island, sea creatures appear on the board and can hurt yourself or others, depending on where they get placed. The person with the most points from the meeples they saved wins the game.

Lastly, we played Gold West, a Western-themed mining game. I was pleasantly surprised by this game as well! You are trying to collect resources to gain victory points by shipping, complete objectives, or build more camps. The game lasts through 10 rounds, and there are multiple ways to gather up the victory points.

There’s an uber interesting mechanic on your player board. When you collect your resources, you place them on your “supply track,” the farther back, the more points you receive. To use the resources on future turns, you have to bring them up the supply track, Mancala-style, which employs a lot of strategy in your management of resources. Pretty neat! You can totally hear all the gears grinding in our head when we were trying to figure out where to place our resources. The board and bonus-tile setup is also random, so I can see this game getting a lot of replay value among our group.

Who out there has played any of these games before?