by Morten "Muyten" Andersen, Lone Gram Larsen, Flemming Lindblad, Claes Schütt and Troels Vastrup
Out of time is a coop time travel game with simple rules. The library is on fire and only you can help! Enter the world of time traveling insanity, save the precious books and leave everything as you found it...on fire that is.
Oh...and please try not to destroy the universe while you're at it.
Presentation
- Time: 60-80 min
- Players: 2-6
- Language: Danish / English (not text heavy)
The rules are fairly simple. Each turn you have two possible actions and two possible ways to move. On top of that you cast spells to help you and exchange books with other players in your current time. That's it. The complexity arises when the players try to solve the challenges ahead of them. Challenges that require them to use their resources, magic and time traveling sensibly.
The time travel mechanics are of course central to the game and are approximately equivalent to the mechanics known from Harry Potter. That is, anything observed is unchangeable but everything else can be changed. This means the players have to make sure that everything they observe actually happen which may lead them to having to place the same book back twice at the same time or other strange and challenging situations.
Remember a paradox is only a paradox until you fix it and nothing lasts forever..not even time travel.
Mechanics: Time travel (simulated...), tile laying, puzzle, cooperative
About the designers
We are part of a larger circle of nerds that play and design board games. Every couple of years we drag one forward to present at Fastaval.
How nerdy you ask?
For this game we spent and entire evening just discussing different concepts of time and even more evenings categorizing different time travel paradigms from various fiction (Back to the Future, Looper, Edge of Tomorrow etc.).
Combined we have been part of creating 6 board games, 2 roleplaying scenarios and 1 larp scenario. We also have about the same number of educations between us....or half as many if we don't count Flemmings.
We have participated in Fastaval with various frequency starting in the mid-90s and have on the way organized designer games, run the board game cafe and been in the board game jury.
