by W. Eric Martin

Time travel is a topic that I never tire of. Well, that I haven't yet tired of, but who knows what will happen in the future? That's part of the appeal of time travel, yes? In any case, here's a handful of games on the topic of time:

▪️ TimemiT is a two-player game from Fabien Gridel that Spanish publisher Zacatrus will release in Q1 2025.

One player takes the role of Nora; the other, Aron, an AI created by Nora that now wants to jump their shared spaceship from the starting point of 2100 to 2220 in order to work with its future self to eliminate humanity. Nora, as you might imagine, finds this idea distasteful and instead wants to travel back to 1980 to eliminate the possibility of humanity-hating AI from coming into existence.

In game terms, each player has a hand of eleven kronos cards and a starting deck of nine power cards. In each of eight rounds, you first reveal three power cards from a separate deck, as well as one event card. Each player then reveals, one by one, as many power cards as they wish from their deck, carrying out the card effects as they do, e.g., moving the space ship in time, reclaiming spent kronos cards, etc. If someone reveals at least three power symbols of the same color, they trigger a paradox, move the ship one space away from them, take a paradox triangle, and cannot draw further in this phase.

After combat with power cards, whoever has the ship closer to their goal bids secretly with their kronos cards on the event card and new power cards available, bidding on each card separately as desired. The other player then bids, after which all bid kronos cards are revealed. Whoever bids higher discards their kronos cards, carries out any immediate effect on that power or event card, then (if it's a power card) places it face up on their power deck for use next round. All kronos cards in a tie and on the losing side of a bid are returned to their owner's hand.

You can retrieve all spent kronos cards only by taking a paradox triangle and moving the ship four spaces away from your goal.


If you ever have six paradox triangles, you're sucked into another dimension and lose the game and your existence. Similarly, if the ship reaches your goal, you win and your opponent finds their existence lacking. Otherwise, the game ends after eight rounds, and whoever has the ship on their side of the timeline — after carrying out all endgame effects on purchased power cards — wins.

▪️ Malicious AI is also the driving force in 2024's Time Splicers, a 2-6 player game from James, Adam, and Katie Staley of Canadian publisher Tin Robot Games.

Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

▪️ Timelancers, due out in April 2025, is the second title from Florida-based publisher Waddling Panda, which is run by designers Juliana Chang, Kenny Heidt, Teresa Ho, and Lee Ho.

Here's an overview of this 1-4 player game, which was crowdfunded in November 2023:

The Timelancers: Enforcer expansion brings the player count up to five, with the enforcer trying to preserve the existing historical timeline, making this a 1 vs. many game experience.

▪️ For a different take on fighting time, we'll turn to Time and the Coyote, which will be the first release from designer Tyler J. Brown through his own publishing brand, Prufrock Studios LLC:

Anyone remember the Steve Englehart comic Coyote from the early 1980s? That and Frank Miller's Ronin were a revelation to young Eric in 1983, although Coyote's impact was short lived as artist Steve Leialoha left after the second issue, which killed my interest in the book.

▪️ After all this messing around with time, we'll close with a fitting game — Chrono Fall: At the End of Space and Time, a 2024 release from designers Christian Peter Schäfer-Scheidtweiler and Stefan Scheidtweiler of German publisher Ornament Games.

An overview of this 1-4 player game: