History has been combined with fun game play in this new board game, simply called “About time” the main focus of the game is simple – Guess the year!
Players progress by giving answers that are closest to the correct year on the question cards. The question cards all feature six events and a year in which the events took place. 
Each card contains questions in six subject categories including arts, politics, everyday life and innovation. Players don’t need to guess the exact year as this of course would be really difficult and especially so for the younger ones. They just need to get closest to the exact year. Inside the box comes guess sheets where players write down their answers.
The question categories include the following:
- Innovation
- The Arts
- Everyday Life
- State and Nation
- World and Thought
- Heroes and Villains
It’s a real educational game and could come in pretty useful for school and pub quizzes. The rules can seem quite complex at first and it did take us a while to get our heads around it all.
There are 2 packs of cards in the game and each pack contains hundreds of cards with hundreds of questions. The starter pack and classic pack. Starter is probably more modern and classic covering a more wider range.Either pack can be played. Or even both together.
Questions range from the ones I’ve never heard of and go back centuries to modern day movies and inventions.
For each correct question or closest answer you get tokens. The game pieces are all historical figures such as queens and even Mozart.
Players move around the board answering time questions. Whilst moving around players can encounter various bad events from history such as the plague or highway men. These encounters have different effects on play.
Another inclusion in the game which adds to the slightly puzzling rules is the time cards which come in three types. –
Joker cards – Collect half of the other teams tokens if you win the round
Clue cards – let you see another event from the year you are trying to guess.
Digit cards – The other team has to tell you a digit of your choice from their answer year.
These cards can be played throughout the game.
And the winner – the person or team with the most tokens at the end.
It’s a long lasting game and the gameplay and rules take some getting used to. It’s aimed at those 14 and over but Ryan has been playing along with friends and family and seems to have picked it up. 2-20 players can play. We usually have 4 or 5.
The game can be purchased at John Lewis for £29.99.
