OuttaTime - Time Mechanics in Games

 Timing is Everything

When it comes to mechanics, the real-time mechanic is definitely one of the most interesting and diverse mechanics that I have come across when playing games. There's so much that can be done both with using a time limit for the game or limiting the time that players can spend on their actions. It also can be used in both competitive and cooperative games to great effect to introduce tension and drama that the game plays with.

I thought I would take some time to review some games that utilize the time and time-based mechanics well, especially since quite a few of them were introduced to me this last year or have been added to my collection this last year.

It's an interesting subgenre of board games that I have found that I enjoy more and more as I play them. While not necessarily a new mechanic that is around in games (looking at you Dutch Blitz), I think that the inclusion of a real-time element often is something that can feel novel, especially with how diversely it can be implemented in games.

Let us take a tour of some fairly highly rated board games (and card games) that include a real-time mechanic in their gameplay.

Escaping in Time

While the original version of Escape: The Curse of the Temple came out all the way back in 2012 (wow, that feels like just yesterday but it's over a decade ago now), the game was only introduced to me in 2022 by my regular game buddy, Anthony. We played a few initial rounds of the game together with my wife, Sarah, and I was immediately amazed at how tight the gameplay felt. It tasks the players (it can play from 1-5 players) to discover new rooms, unload cursed gems, find artefacts, and remove curses, all while under a strict 10 minute time limit to get out of the temple. While the timer is going, there are two separate occasions that the players have to return to the central chamber or risk losing a die, the central movement and action mechanic of the game.

Note how each chamber has a "movement" cost

The game itself is played in real-time with players rolling dice to open new rooms, which are drawn from a stack of tiles, enter the rooms, break curses, get rid of gems and obtain treasures. Curses can make the players lose the ability to speak, use one of their dice, or even lose a dice permanently if it falls of the table whereas treasures often have a one-time use, such as teleporting a player to another player, or being used as an additional icon if necessary. The caveat with the dice is that there is a black "cursed" mask that if rolled, locks the dice until a golden "curse breaking" face is rolled (which unlocks two black masks). If you've rolled all five black masks, you're trapped and cannot move until another player comes to your chamber and unlocks your masks with a golden mask of their own.

The game itself is cooperative and very fun to play. What's even more fun is over the years, people have taken the original soundtrack and made their own remixes of it and placed them on youtube, soundcloud, etc. If you want to escape the temple with the Legend of Zelda soundtrack, or with the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme in the background while you do so, it's available!

While not necessarily my favorite game on this list, I still enjoy playing Escape from time to time, especially since the rounds are 10 minutes at max.

The Science Supports the Data

I talked about this game at length in my previous post about dexterity games, but For Science! also incorporates a timing portion with the game. Players are tasked to complete their towers and find the cure for the virus/bacteria that is originally placed at the beginning of the game for the final objective. The entire game takes place in a predetermined time set by the in-game timer located in the free app and players need to complete their objective cooperatively in the set time in order to win the game. There is dramatic tension that gets added with the game while players scramble to build, verify and recreate their towers throughout the game. Because verifying towers takes time as well as calling a meeting to confirm that the cure has been found, it becomes a race to ensure that you and your fellow players have enough time to work on your own stuff while others work towards the win. I won't go into it further here since I discussed the game quite a bit on my last post, but I love the inclusion of the real-time element in this game.

Rushing the Hospital

Rush M.D. was a game that came completely out of left field for me and was really fun to play with a group of guys that knew what they were doing. Rush M.D. uses two separate real-time elements to play the game, which to me was absolutely bonkers. The first is the overall game timer that you play each round under. All tasks need to be completed by the time the overall timer is done or you risk losing patients and reducing the overall hospital reputation. The second real-time element is the inclusion of small sand timers that are either keyed to the player color, or a basic blue. Rather than allowing players to complete objectives as fast as possible, the timers are used to show how long it is before they can move onto a new tasks. Only players may touch their own "Doctor" timer, but any player can move a "nurse" timer once it runs out. What follows is a chaotic mix of attempting to manage your various timers to complete tasks that might require either one or both of the two types of timers to complete the necessary tasks to assist patients. It's very fun, but also requires significant organizational skills, so this might not be the game for people who aren't able to track multiple things at once while others do the same.

Project-ing Confidence

If I had to compare Project: ELITE with another game, I would say that it's a mix of StarCraft (Zerg rush anyone?) and XCOM: Enemy Unknown (alien invasion and elites fighting them). You have a band of elite warriors looking to obtain materials/complete objectives in a set board, all while attempting to protect an extraction point, or choke point, from an onrush of aliens that grows each round. The game uses dice rolling in a real-time round where players are able to move, shoot, and complete objectives, all while defending the onslaught of overwhelming alien numbers. Your character is a badass, but even the most powerful warriors can be taken down by sheer numbers, and that's what this game excels with. Each of the two-minute rounds feels quick and the game ultimately ends with you completing the objectives or aliens take over the earth. With no room for compromise, each round becomes a series of quick-decisions and tactical maneuvering and communication to ensure that you and your fellow ELITES are not taken down by the swarm that bears down upon you.

I personally love this game as I spent hours upon hours playing Command & Conquer: Red Alert and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings and it feels like a board game version of the games to me. Unfortunately, due to the quick nature of the game and the constant readjusting of strategy, I don't think that my wife will ever play this, so I'll just have to play it whenever offered by my fellow board gaming group.

Drivin' My Truck

The real-time element of Galaxy Trucker has each player building their spaceship in the amount of time indicated by the included in-game timer. Players race to pull parts from a shared pile of tiles to build the best ship that they can while the timer slowly ticks down. Once finished, players can choose to end their build early if they believe that they have a ship that can withstand the many misadventures that space can throw at them, but they can also choose to continue to build onto their ship as long as they have valid locations to place tiles. The game proceeds into the transport phase after which is done through drawing cards, but each round sees the player rebuilding a ship in real time, making the game actively use the element through the entire process. It's a fun little challenge to build a ship that doesn't have any errors, while also scrambling to build something that will (hopefully) work better than your opponent's ship and get the win.

Escape This!

Both the Unlock! games and the Exit games feature a timer that is used to provide the player with a both a challenge to complete the included problems before the end of the timer, but also as a scoring mechanism. With the recent rise in escape room popularity, it was only inevitable before someone took that idea and put it on the table. With that idea, both Unlock! and Exit were created to simulate the experience of an escape room and they incorporate the time limit that is an included element with escape rooms. Both mentioned games include it also to score the players on their achievement in the game and effectively allow players to gauge how well they did based on time past. Out of both examples, I would say that I prefer the Unlock! games, but that's only because I've played more of them.


A-Maze-ing Opportunities

Out of all the games that I've talked about today, I would have to say that my favorite of them all is Magic Maze. I was first introduced to the game several years ago and although it took some time to find it (it was out of print for a while due to the pandemic), I was able to pick up both the base game and the expansion. The entire game is a cooperative, real-time play and tasks each of the players to move pawns around an ever-growing mall to steal each of the pawn's respective weapons and escape the mall before the timer runs out of sand. Each player has a set of directions that they can move the pawns, and/or discover new rooms, use escalators, and portals and those tokens move every time the timer is reset. There are portals that are spaced around the mall as well as timer reset spaces, but it all comes with a catch: the players are not allowed to talk with one another while the pawns are in play. There are special rules that get introduced that allow the players to talk under certain circumstances, but that prevents the players from moving the pawns and requires quite a bit of concentration from players to ensure that they are monitoring each player piece to ensure that they get to their respective weapon and/or exit. Frenetic gesturing and wild waving is technically not in the allowed repertoire of communication as there is a "do something" token that players can slam in front of players if they need to move a pawn, but the game tends to devolve the more urgent players feel, especially as they watch one player miss a necessary movement to help move a pawn around to the ultimate goal.

The game also nicely has various scenarios in both the base game and Maximum Security expansion that introduce players to how to play with the various mechanics included with each game. Each added mechanic is played separately, allowing players to get used to the frenetic pace at which each game is played and represents some of the most clever mechanic introductions in games that I've ever had the opportunity to play. At no point does the game require you to play with any mechanics if you do not want to, and players can pick and choose which powers they would like to include, although every power included does make the game easier (if not a bit more complicated).

It's easily my favorite board game of all time, not only because of the clever introduction of mechanics, but also because it plays lightning fast, and utilizes the real-time mechanic in an extremely clever and fun way. While Magic Maze tends to err on the medium-light side of games, I can easily recommend it to anyone who is looking for an ever-changing, time-based game. Despite playing quite a few new board games this last year, Magic Maze still tops my BGG list for my favorite game, although that might be under fire from a few others that I've played recently.

Time and Again...

I'm going to come out and say right now that the time-based mechanics are probably one of my favorite mechanics to play with. I love the idea of being under a time limit and having to complete necessary tasks in that time. Obviously, this mechanic is not for everyone, but I will say to give it a try if you haven't before. You might find that playing under a time limit add some of that additional tension that you are wanting in your games.

What are some games that you've played with a time-based mechanic that you could recommend to others? Do you have any experience playing games with a time-mechanic? If so, what are your thoughts on adding a time mechanic to games? Would you choose to not play a game if it implemented a time-based mechanic into the gameplay?

I look forward to your responses and hope you have a wonderful week everyone! Keep on playing those games and have fun!

*Originally published on BoardGameGeek on 19/2/2024*