Looney LabsEarly American Chrononauts Card Game - Travel Through Time and Change History

They're an amazing couple who makes great games. This has some elements of Fluxx, but with greater player control. It's also a painless history lesson in a box. Highly recommended. Easy to learn and fun to play.

This is a great little filler game, and I love the humorous touches. It uses the same simple mechanic as Fluxx (draw 1, play 1) but thematically it's totally different. You play as a time traveler from an alternate timeline who's trying to get home. To that end, you have an ID card that tells who you are, what changes you need to make to get back to your timeline, and a little bit of backstory. Getting home is only one way to win, though. You can also complete your mission (shown on a separate Mission card), which is done by having the right Artifact cards on the table in front of you, similar to how Keepers work in Fluxx. Or you can win by having 10 cards in your hand. The timeline cards serve as your game board, laid out in the same order every time you play. You can play certain cards to flip a purple Linchpin card. Doing so alters the event described on the card, and also has a ripple effect, making it so you also have to flip over specified blue Ripplepoint cards, creating Paradoxes. Paradoxes are very very bad, as having 13 of them means everyone loses, but luckily you can play Patch cards to patch up the timeline with alternate versions of those events. One of my favorite things about the game is how the Artifacts often have little jokes or nods to certain time travel movies, like the Sports Almanac from the Future, a clear nod to Back to the Future Part II. I own 5 different versions of Fluxx, and I love them all, and they're great to break out at parties and other social gatherings because of how fast and simply they play. However, I like Chrononauts better than Fluxx, both thematically and in terms of gameplay. Where Fluxx is the Calvinball of card games, Chrononauts takes what's great about Fluxx and refines it by making it actually adhere to a solid set of rules, yet somehow it still feels like a Fluxx game and conveys that same sense of fun.

Fascinating game that really gives your brain a workout. There's always at least three different ways for you to win and you have to balance all three goals with different strategies. What's the most fun are the alternate histories you create along the way. For example, one time traveler identity has no goals past the year 1950, so he doesn't really care if the intelligent cockroaches from a million years in the future cause a World War Three in 1962 that creates the radioactive environment that eventually spawns their race. Or there's the the hippie driving a time-travelog VW who accidentally wins because she picks up so many odd artifacts (like a live dinosaur, the videotape of the beginning of the universe and the piece of German chocolate cake that was the hit of the 1938 Worlds Fair in Warsaw) along her travels that she wins by sheer quantity of items. It's possible to play a solitaire game (different from the one described in the rules and exactly like the multi-player version) if you're comfortable with playing back and forth among many identities. However, the first game or two you play with others should be more of a cooperative experience as you all figure out the rules. I've found that a TV tray table is the perfect size to hold the timeline cards (four rows of eight cards each), but if you combine this game with the American Revolution Chrononauts, you'll need most of a dining room table to hold all the cards. You'll also need a bigger box to hold all the cards -- as it is, you can fit in the two expansion packs ("the Gore Years" and "Los Identities") into this one's box, but just barely. Web site is good for support, though some of the postings are a bit dated.

... and very silly. There are three ways to win the game (collecting the artifacts of your secret mission, adjusting the timeline to that of your own parallel universe, or gaining enough cards in your hard - usually by patching time paradoxes) which helps keep the game from getting repetitive or boring. The game does require quite a bit of table space to spread out the cards of the timeline, so it should be considered as much a board game as a card game. There does seem to be a preponderance of depressing events; it might have been nice to throw in some less depressing ones (or even seemingly insignificant ones to show how chaos theory and the "butterfly effect" might work.) Overall, quite an imaginative and fun game.

Time travel is very interesting. It has always intrigued people. Sometimes people wish that they go back in history and have a redo. Other times people wish they could speed up the clock; such as when a child is going through a difficult stage, you are very pregnant and just want to have that baby. Other times people want to either go back into history and see what it was like to live back then or peek into the future to see what might happenBut with time travel there comes consequences. In Back to the Future II, Marty and Doc were very careful not to mess up what had already 'happened' in the future because a time paradox could happen.Doc: "I foresee two possibilities. One, seeing herself thirty years in the future would put Jennifer into shock and she'd simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox. The results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!... Granted, that's the worst-case scenario. The destruction however might be limited merely to our own galaxy."Marty: "Well that's a relief!"— Doc and Marty were discussing the ramifications of Jennifer running into herself.Chrononauts is a game that allows you to make paradoxes left and right without real-life consequences. It took as a little while to learn the directions of the game but once we understood them the games kept rolling. We ended up playing 5 games the first night we played

Sono un appassionato di giochi da tavolo e giochi di carte. Mi piacciono particolarmente i giochi cooperativi e quelli che si possono giocare in solitaria.Chrononauts è uno di quei giochi che possono farvi divertire in solitaria, ed è anche divertente e interessante da giocare.Non è un gioco ambientatissimo, ma la sfida si sente. Il prezzo giusto sarebbe una decina di euro. Se lo trovate in offerta a questa cifra lo consiglio!Dimenticavo di dire che è in inglese. Quindi è richiesta una minima conoscenza delle lingua per comprenderne le meccaniche del regolamento e leggere il poco testo sulle carte.

Un juego muy divertido para jugar con los amigos, y sencillo de aprender. Los piques entre jugadores están asegurados.Incluye una modalidad de juego "en solitario" bastante entretenida.El aspecto de las cartas, la caja y las instrucciones es bastante atractivo.

An excellent short game, perfect for 3-4 players (I haven't tried the one-person option but it seems pretty straightforward). If you love Fluxx but want something where you can be more overtly dastardly in your dealings with other players, this is the game for you. The historical events are sometimes a little US-specific but most are world events that we all know of. The expansion packs are good fun too, although I always revert back to the original.

Schade, dass es keine deutsche Version dieses Kartenspiels gibt, denn es hätte ein größeres Publikum verdient. Glücklicherweise ist es aber auch mit rudimentären Englischkenntnissen spielbar und bisher hat es jeder meiner Mitspieler während der ersten Runden verstanden. Das Spielprinzip ist ziemlich ungewöhnlich, ich habe jedenfalls noch nichts vergleichbares gesehen: Man spielt einen Zeitreisenden, der die Vergangenheit manipuliert.Zu Beginn des Spiels wird eine Zeitleiste aus Karten ausgelegt, die grob die letzten 100 Jahre der Weltgeschichte umfasst. Achtung, aus eigener Erfahrung muss ich davon abraten, unterwegs zu spielen. Man braucht Platz und absolute Windstille! Auf jeder Karte ist ein historisches Ereignis samt Jahreszahl verzeichnet. 13 davon sind sogenannte "Linchpins", 19 sind "Ripplepoints". Linchpins sind Ereignisse, die besonders einschneidend die Zukunft geprägt haben. Zum Beispiel das Attentat auf Kennedy. Mit ihren Handkarten können die Spieler Linchpins ändern, so dass das Gegenteil eintritt. Im Fall von JFK würde dies bedeuten, dass er nur verwundet wurde. Ripplepoint-Karten können nicht direkt manipuliert werden, sondern nur als Reaktion auf Linchpins. Dass verhinderte Kennedy-Attentat kann zur Folge haben, dass der Vietnamkrieg früher beendet wird und die Russen statt der Amerikaner als erste auf dem Mond landen - vorausgesetzt ein Spieler spielt die richtigen "Flicken-Karten".Ziel des Spiels ist es, eine von drei Siegbedingungen als erster zu erfüllen. Man kann entweder möglichst viele Handkarten sammeln, seltene Artefakte ausspielen oder seine persönliche Zeitleiste wiederherstellen, die man zu Beginn des Spiels im Geheimen zugewiesen bekommen hat. Dazu gibt es noch diverse Aktionskarten, um die Mitspieler zu ärgern und sich selber Vorteile zu verschaffen.Klingt kompliziert? Keine Sorge, es ist alles ganz logisch aufgebaut und die Kartentypen sind Dank verschiedener Farben und deutlicher Symbole schnell verinnerlicht. Dass jedoch alle Mitspieler an der Zeitleiste herumfummeln, sorgt immer wieder für böse Überraschungen. Da hat man gerade das Columbine Massaker verhindert, weil dies eine der persönlichen Siegbedingungen ist, da lässt ein anderer Spieler plötzlich den dritten Weltkrieg ausbrechen, wodurch die Zukunft ungeschehen gemacht wird. Hier muss schnell reagiert werden! Sollten die Zeitreisenden bei ihren Manipulationsversuchen zu viele Lücken in der Zeitleiste entstehen lassen, verlieren nämlich alle. So eine Zeitmaschine ist eben kein Kinderspielzeug.Man könnte dem Spiel ankreiden, dass es durch seine Unberechenbarkeit einen hohen Glücksfaktor mit sich bringt. Aber vielleicht macht gerade dieses verrückte Chaos einen Großteil des Spielspaßes aus? Ich bin eigentlich absolut kein Freund von Spielen, bei denen das Glück eine große Rolle spielt und man nicht sieht, wie nahe die Gegner am Sieg dran sind. Aber Chrononauts macht mir trotzdem unheimlichen Spaß. Immer wieder kann sich alles komplett drehen.Es gibt übrigens sogar eine stilechte "Zurück in die Zukunft" Version, in der dann Ereignisse und Personen aus den Filmen die historischen Ereignisse ersetzen und die Regeln etwas angepasst wurden.Fazit: Ein ungewöhnliches, ungemein spaßiges Konzept, das humorvoll umgesetzt wurde. Die Regeln klingen komplizierter als sie sind, ich kann Chrononauts nur wärmstens empfehlen!

Von allen mir bekannten Kartenspielen hat dieses wohl das interessanteste Thema.Sieht zuerst aus wie eine Patience ist aber erheblich komplexer und macht trotzdem eine Menge Spaß.Das Spiel lässt sich auf 3 verschiedene Arten spielen und so auch in Grenzen anpassen.Aber Achtung: Das Solospiel ist ein echter Brain-burner.