Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)"Chrononauts" is another card game by the creators of "Fluxx." The general premise is that you're a time traveler from an alternate timeline (not the history we know, but some alternate history) who has to return home.
You play on an 8 x 4 grid of cards that represents the "timeline." Each card in the grid shows a historical event like the JFK assassination or the Lincoln assassination. As the game progresses, players play cards that "alter" the timeline - for example, if JFK was just injured, but wasn't actually assassinated, that would have a ripple effect on events further down the timeline and might create paradoxes.
While the timeline is getting altered, players can also play "artifacts" which represent the player visiting a given point of history and stealing something historically significant, like the Mona Lisa.
You can win the game by either changing the timeline to match the alternate history you come from or by retrieving a specific target set of artifacts. Everyone loses if too many paradoxes are created in the timeline.
The game takes a little bit to get into because, while the rules are simple, it's not immediately clear how the timeline "ripple effects" work. You'll figure it out soon enough by playing the game, but it might take a few turns before it truly clicks. It might be good to play the first game with everyone just showing their cards to the group so folks can help each other through. Once you figure it out, start over and play "for real."
The educational aspect of this game is in the historical timeline. If you've got people unfamiliar with some of the events or why changing this event might alter the course of history and affect that event, it can bring up some interesting conversation. For kids, it might get them interested in finding out more about those events. That said, it isn't a history lesson itself - there's not, like, a bunch of details about the events, just general chronology.
Once you figure out the gameplay and the strategy, it gets to be a pretty competitive and fun game. It's easy to set up and doesn't take a ton of room. The product description says it takes 20 - 45 minutes to play, but the first time through it took closer to an hour because we were working through all the ins-and-outs of play. I think you could probably get it close to the 40 minute range, but unless cards fell exactly right, I don't know that I'd count on a 20 minute game.
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Publisher: Looney Laboratories, Inc. Number of Players: 1-6 Designer: Andrew Looney. Playing time: 20 to 45 minutes. Ages: 11 & up .Awards: Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game 2000, Parent's Choice Award: Silver Honor Overview: Imagine that you are a time traveler, cast into the abyss of temporal non-existence when key event within your history change, making your timeline cease to exist. Now, armed with the unreliable tool of Time Travel, you can jaunt back and forth through the ages of history, altering events to make your present into the future. But many dangers exist: paradoxes within the time stream, rival time travelers and patching up the tears from your own work. Chrononauts is a fantastic card game designed to allow adults and older kids to have fun together, even as they watch how history builds upon the past. It also serves as a sneaky way to drum up interest in history, by showing how the ripples from an event like the assassination of Abe Lincoln has repercussions even to the year 2000! Expansions: Lost Identities Booster Other games you might like: Fluxx, Nanofictionary
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