(Spoilers) T.I.M.E Stories Review Part 2 - Looking Back at the Mystery, Frustration, and Progression

Alright, the spoiler version, I can finally talk about good parts of T.I.M.E Stories without worrying about ruining it for everybody. It should go without saying, but here we'll be discussing many details from the game's theme, plot, and setting. You have been warned.

I do want to be courteous to people just trying to scroll past this post, so I'll keep it picture-free.

Spoiler Mode: Engaged. For your safety, scroll down to the next spoiler warning message.

So where do I start? In the spoiler-free version we went over the characters, the art, how innovative the game's design was, and how it's a great purchase as long as you don't mind only playing it once. Those are all important points, but we didn't get to cover the real meat of the game, the mystery, the setting, and the gameplay experience overall.

So let's do that now.

Gameplay
Oh, for some context, there were four of us playing. My friends were playing as the cocaine addict, the big punchy brute, the lonely little girl with abandonment issues, and I was the sultry red-head with good communication skills (naturally.)

Right off the bat we were thrown into the Day Room with a stern-looking nurse and a few patients. Something about that first moment in the game's world felt right. It just said "Okay, go," and turned us loose inside this unsettling 1920's asylum. Gaining information in those first stages of the game was really exciting and interesting because we didn't yet know which details would be important later and which ones were just for extra flavor.

In that first play through, we dove headlong into the scene in each area, tying to pry up any bit of information we could. When we found our first pentacle, we spent a good ten minutes examining it, turning it, and rearranging all the letters on the points into a torrent of gibberish that would make Cthulu himself blush.

Then came the second pentacle.

Then the third.

We were getting clues. They didn't make any sense yet, but we were making progress. Now, obviously we ran out of time on that first play through, but we were hooked. We knew something fishy was going on with the doctor and the missing patients. There was still a big chunk of the area to explore, too. Losing our hard-earned items was hard, but getting to keep the additional map areas that we revealed took some of the sting out of it. We reluctantly gave up our keys, journal entries, and pentacles and started plotting the next course, focusing on the more essential parts.

We kept laboring away at the mystery until we realized four hours had passed and we hadn't eaten. The game has that effect on you, and I think it's the mark of a truly great game experience. We spent planned out our next move over dinner, cracked the code and went on to beat the game. The best part of the ending was the reveal of the beacons. Our minds were blown. Hiding something in the actual, real-life box shattered the fourth wall in a way we never expected. "Whaaat!" we yelled in unison, scaring the hell out of my poor cat, and grabbing for the game box.

I think in total we played the game for four or five hours not counting the food break, even though most of the break was spent discussing theories and planning how to proceed once we started back up again.


The Mystery
Let's talk about the quality of the mystery/riddle itself. First off, I'm glad that it was an actual puzzle and not a variation of the Sphinx riddle that everybody knows. Gathering the five pieces, studying them, and using the hints you were given early to bring it all together made solving the mystery a lot more rewarding.

I don't think the puzzle was especially difficult, but that's not to say it has to be. It kept us busy throughout the game, and I saw some comments online of people complaining that it was too hard. One comment said that his group played for several hours with four pentacles and eventually just gave up and called it a night when they couldn't find the fifth, the one on the handle of the key. They had it the whole time, but failed to notice the design. I thought it was pretty clever to have two of the clues be something other than journal pages, since it would have been dull to wander around knowing exactly what to look for. Once a pentacle appeared on the key, we started looking for them to pop up on other items. I was a little disappointed they didn't take that idea further, but it still made the game more immersive. When it came to solving the five pentacles, I thought that it was funny that one of the first things you learn in the asylum turns out to be the cipher for unraveling the whole mystery.

In addition to the pentacles, there's a sort of secondary riddle in the form of the tears of the manticore. This one was a lot more obvious. As soon as we read it, I figured it would either be literal tears from killing the beast, or some kind of gemstone. The most intriguing part of this bite-sized mystery is that we still don't have any clue what the reward from it is or even does. We've just been lugging this cube (I've been calling it the Timecube) from mission to mission, waiting for it to do something. There's even a beacon for it, and I have to admit I'm pretty anxious to see what this is for. Do we get more of them? Will we get a Timesphere and a Timepyramid and a Timecylinder to go with the Timecube?

Frustration
Nobody should ever play T.I.M.E Stories and expect to finish it on the first run. Even if you could, you would miss so much of the game's content that the victory would feel really hollow and anticlimactic. With that said, there's a couple instances of total bull honkey where the game makes you waste some TU and then says, "Hah. Got ya."

First, as most of you have already guessed, I'm talking about the plunger event. In the promenade, there's a dapper-looking man swinging around a lamp post. If you approach him and have the plunger, he confides that he is also an agent of the Consortium. He goes on to tell you that the plunger is a powerful artifact, and if you let him perform a ritual with it, something totally cool will definitely happen.

It seems unlikely, if not completely ridiculous; but you have to try anyways, just to know. Of course, you have to commit a hefty five TU to the cause before the ritual will complete. The next card reveals that nothing happens at all, and now you've got to try to make up for lost time. Better luck next time, agents suckers.

The next instance of tomfoolery occurs later on in the game. Usually when the group is trying to gather a few more last minute clues or explore into unseen territory. Deep in the catacombs, the party has to progress one step at a time, from card B all the way to card E. Of course it wouldn't feel like spooky asylum catacombs if they weren't stuffed to the brim with horrible monstrosities. The monsters have a lot of skull shields and take a while to put down. One actually has a 50% chance of getting right back up when you "kill" it. If you manage to limp your way out of the first two fights, the third abomination instantly deals one heart of damage to everybody, most likely killing at least one player. After you beat the final monster in the terrible trio, it's time to collect your prize.

You turn over the last card, ready for an earth-shattering revelation or some kind of bad ass rocket launcher that fires exploding chainsaws. What you actually get is nothing. You emerge from a trap door outside the grounds of the asylum in an old cigar shop. The card basically says, "You could look around, but this is a dead end." Oh, okay, sure. Even in the best case scenario, it probably takes at least six or seven TU to get to this point, and now you've got to back track and do something useful. Well, at least you're not all dead.

The final one is more of a check to make sure you were paying attention than it is an outright trick. Well, it's absolutely a trick but-- Alright, anyways. At the very end, the girl from the day room asks you join the ritual to open a temporal rift, which happens to be exactly the thing you came here to prevent. If you agree, you lose the game and Bob is super pissed. Way to go, team.

Then you do what any reasonable human does. You turn the card back over and say, "Just kidding! Just wanted to see what would happen." You then choose the correct answer of not opening the rift, because starting over from here is for chumps.

We Played the Game. What now?
So now you're done with T.I.M.E Stories Asylum and you don't know if you should keep it for the expansions and take up precious shelf space, donate it, or use it as kindling for the long winter. The way I see it, you have three options.

First, you could hang on to it. Put it on your shelf and come back to it when everybody feels like playing an expansion. That being said, The Marcy case was a huge disappointment. Every review I read said The Marcy Case was an even better experience than Asylum, which was not the case.

I haven't been able to get my hands on The Prophecy of Dragons Expansion yet, but the reviews I've read said it's not good. Who knows, though, since the reviews were so wrong about The Marcy Case. There's also a third expansion scheduled to come out some time this month, so there are plenty of adventures for you to continue with if you choose.

Second, lend it to your friends. Explain to them that it's basically a murder mystery-type game in a box. Try not to spoil anything for them. In my case, I have friends that live far away, but we use voice and video chat often. I set up the game in view of my webcam and played as the game master while the four of them went through the mystery. I held cards up the the camera so they could see the clues visually and I tried to say as little as possible if it wasn't something written on a card.

Last, you could sell or donate it. You're done with it anyways, and it's not like you're going to forget enough about the game's plot to ever make it worth playing again. Remember though, you will need the base game to play the expansions.

Spoiler Mode: Disengaged. It is now safe to move about the blog.

That's it for the first T.I.M.E Stories game. My goal is for the non-spoiler version to be an informative pre-play read, and the spoiler version to be an insightful post-play reflection and discussion. Thanks for reading.