At first I thought my family and I were total failures at playing TIME Stories. My mom got mad because we reset the whole game after burning through all our time units; my dad tried to solve everything in the first run (he’s a big fan of action); and I was just running around that creepy old asylum looking for clues without any real plan.
However, I could never shake the concept that the designers built failure into the game. To me that was genius. And I knew we were doing it wrong. So I did what I usually do when a game isn’t working – I obsessed about it until I found a way to make it work better.
It ended up that my family and I came up with this entire system for playing more efficiently. Not just for ourselves, but the strategies we developed worked with my board game club at the library too.
The main discovery I made was figuring out that the first time through any scenario should be a scouting mission. I call it mapping out where the best clues are located. Don’t try to solve the mystery on your first run – just find out which areas have the most important clues and which are basically time-wasting.
Last summer when we played The Marcy Case, Lily decided she wanted to solve the puzzle on her first run. She spent six time units on something that would’ve been way easier to handle once we understood the bigger picture. Meanwhile, my dad was checking out different areas to see what was there. He saved us at least one full reset and possibly two.
Another thing I discovered – don’t have everyone cheque out the same spots. It’s a total waste. Once you have an idea of what you consider your “information map” (that’s what I call it anyway) divide and conquer depending on what each character is good at. If you have someone playing the strong fighter type send them to cheque out the dangerous looking areas. If you have someone playing the character who notices small details, they should cheque out the areas that are heavy on observations.
We did this well during Expedition Endurance which is still my favorite module. The ship layout changes constantly so you need to be strategic about who goes where and when. Jim from my adult game group was playing his combat-focused character so he mapped out all the areas that looked potentially hazardous. I was using my detail oriented character to cheque out the areas that seemed to be more puzzle-heavy. This combination worked perfectly.
Something that may sound strange – but taking good notes is super important for this game. More important than almost any other board game I have ever played. You won’t remember everything between resets, trust me on this. We learned this the hard way during our first few modules when we kept rechecking areas we already knew were dead ends.
I actually created a template for us to use — just a simple sheet with sections for important discoveries, character-specific information, things we have ruled out, and what we need to cheque next time. My dad laughed at me when I first brought printed templates, but now he admits they have made a huge difference. We don’t lose near as much time going in circles anymore.
When you realise your current run isn’t going to solve everything (which happens almost every first attempt) — don’t just start wandering around randomly until you run out of time units. Turn into an intentional information-gathering machine. Focus on finding things that’ll be super valuable for your next run.
In Under the Mask we realised we wouldn’t be able to solve the mystery in our current run midway through. Rather than just wandering around, we spent the remainder of our time units mapping out the temple layout. That information was incredibly useful when we reset and tried again. What felt like a failure turned out to be an intentional intelligence-gathering mission.
Also, you have to figure out which pieces of information are most important to you. Not every piece of information is equally important or urgent. Some things open up new areas or provide context to puzzles you know you’re going to encounter. The rest of the information is just background flavor that doesn’t really help you move the story along.
Learning to differentiate between the two will greatly increase your efficiency.
A Prophecy of Dragons really drove this lesson home for us. There is so much rich detail about the fantasy world and its history, and at first we tried to soak up as much as possible. However, the vast majority of that background information does not actually contribute to solving the core mystery. When we focused solely on mechanically-relevant discoveries and viewed the world-building as secondary, we shaved a large amount of time off our completion.
Having different players work on different problems at the same time instead of all players focusing on the same problem really improved our ability to solve puzzles. TIME Stories frequently presents these interdependent puzzles where identifying connections between elements is the key to success.
During that same module, A Prophecy of Dragons, we got completely stuck on a constellation puzzle when we tried to solve it collectively. However, when we broke off into pairs and each player investigated a different element of the puzzle and shared their findings regarding potential relationships, we were able to solve it far more quickly. At times, having multiple players process the puzzle from different perspectives can be more effective than having everyone examine the exact same area.
Planning for combat in these scenarios also takes a lot of planning. You need to plan ahead for how many battles you expect to encounter and how you will allocate your healing items and equipment. Taking damage early on can sometimes be beneficial if it allows you to have more resources available for harder battles later on.
Brotherhood of the Coast really illustrated this for us. There are multiple battle encounters throughout the module with varying degrees of difficulty, and our first run failed largely due to using up all of our good combat items too early. On subsequent runs, we were able to estimate how many battles we expected to fight and their relative difficulties, allowing us to better manage our resources.
Which characters you choose to use can also affect how successful your runs will be. Each module includes a variety of characters, each with unique strengths and weaknesses, and you want to have a team with diverse abilities rather than multiple versions of the same character. Plan your team according to the needs of the current module.
When we played The Forbidden Mask, our initial character choices were totally inappropriate for the needs of that particular module. Following our first reset, we completely revised our team composition based upon what we learned about the types of challenges we faced. This single change probably saved us an entire run of time units.
Maybe the most important lesson I’ve learned is recognising when to voluntarily reset instead of continuing to force yourself to continue in the hopes of completing the current run. Occasionally you will gather all of the available information you can using your current items and access levels, and you will not be able to advance further without resetting. Voluntarily resetting at this point, even when you have time units remaining, can be more efficient than continuing to waste time units searching for something you cannot obtain.
Estrella Drive really taught us this lesson the hard way. We chose to reset at a time when we still had several time units remaining, because we realised we needed a specific item to continue and we knew we couldn’t get it in our current condition. This voluntary reset put us in perfect position for a successful run of the subsequent run, whereas continuing to press on would have only wasted the remaining time units.
I really enjoy how TIME Stories turns traditional gaming on its head. Typically, failure is considered a waste of time, but here, failure is literally part of the game mechanics – you are meant to fail and learn. The key is to fail intentionally, and to extract as much knowledge as possible from each inevitable reset.
My son laughs at my detailed records of our performance in each module – how many runs we required to complete, etc., etc. But the truth is, the data has really helped us improve with each new module. What used to take us four or five runs, we can now often complete in two or three.
Using these methods has significantly improved how we enjoy TIME Stories. Now we view each run as a purposeful investigation with certain goals. The sense of accomplishment comes not just from solving the mystery, but from executing an efficient temporal mission – collecting the greatest amount of information in the shortest time possible.
When you accept and use the reset mechanism instead of fighting it, the game becomes much better. Create a mental map of where the best clues are, divide your team members into specialized roles, document what you have eliminated as possibilities, use “failed” runs strategically, prioritise discoveries based on relevance, attack puzzles from different directions simultaneously, focus on discovering mechanically relevant information, prepare for managing your combat resources, create a team of characters with complementary abilities, and reset at optimal points in time, rather than at the point of being forced.
Our family TIME Stories nights have become some of our most enjoyable gaming experiences. There is something special about working together to solve these temporal mysteries, discovering new things, and knowing that you are developing your investigative skills with each module.
So the next time you jump back through time to save civilization from itself – remember, scout first, assign roles, take good notes, reset strategically, and don’t try to solve everything on your first pass. Your temporal efficiency will improve greatly, and isn’t that exactly what every time agency wants from its agents? Well, that and keeping reality intact. But seriously, good record-keeping is probably number one.
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