Looney LabsChrononauts

I love this game! It's heaps of fun to play with a group of friends. It takes about 30ish minutes to play through, so the time commitment lends itself nicely to pretty much any occasion (and you can play over and over and over and not get bored). The game deals with the concept of time travel, but only in a very loose soft sci-fi way. There's no big science, or deep philosophical implications. It's bite-sized, fun, and humorous. I used to play Crononauts all the time in my early twenties, but somewhere along the line I lost the cards when I moved. I'm so glad to be able to play it again.The rules aren't very complicated, but it might take a few "practice rounds" to get the hang of it. I was a little rusty after not playing for a few years, and found plenty of helpful videos on youtube.

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.

I love this game! We watched the youtube video to figure it out the first time, and then played until 2am by accident because we were so into it!!!

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.

This game can be played as a standalone, but it is not quite as good as the original. It's certainly worth the purchase if you want to expand the twentieth-century timeline of standard Chrononauts. Also, there are a lot of fun new artifacts. As a non-American, I would have liked to have seen world events included in the timeline, as opposed to just American, but I can't really complain since it does what it says on the box: Early AMERICAN Chrononauts!