Review Timeline Card Game

Timeline is an Interesting little card game that is compact quick and fun. Best of all it also teaches you at the same time as being a darn good game. Not an easy task. How does it carry out this goal ? With an extremely simple mechanic and a simple elegant design.

The game lays out cards in a simple row and each players takes turns playing cards. The goal is to place your card in the proper order of time. If you place your card in the right place in history your turn is over. If you fail you must discard the card and draw a new one. Play continues until one player no longer has any cards.

If multiple players go out in the same round, then everyone else is eliminated from play and the remaining players play one more round. If only one player has no cards after a bonus round, he wins; otherwise play continues until a single player goes out.

Pro’s

The game play is overall very fast. That is the nice thing about a game like this. 15 min or less. You’re in and out you had some fun. Perfect for a game this size. Also perfect for children. The Small cards are also perfect for little hands. This leads back to the education theme again. After all the best way to teach a child is to have fun. Time line has fun down in spades. Lastly the game is very cheep overall costing about Ten bucks.

Con’s

If you happen to be a member of the fat finger society or not have the best eyesight in the world this game might be slightly annoying to you. Where the cards are prefect for tiny hands. They are Small and by small I mean very small cards. The odd size and front back nature of the cards also means that you are unlikely going to be able to put these cards in card protectors. (Note: I could be wrong on this). My only other con would be its replay value. After a few play’s the 109 cards are going to do just what I think the game was designed to do. Teach you when things happen in history. After that, the game’s replay value is going to drop off sharply.

Runkle’s Ranking

So where do I rank it? Well I had a lot of fun playing the few rounds that I did of Timeline. I would recommend it highly for parents that want to play games with their kids as well as sneak some learning in at the same time. For parents the replay value is likely to last longer than adults. I think it would make a great coffee table or con game as well. A game you can whip out and play a round or two of while you wait for that last player to show up for game or your players are taking a bathroom/snack break. But I can not give it high scores for a game to place in my regular board game night bag.

For these reasons I give Timeline a rank of eleven. It is a better than average game and is fun to play for a few minuets at a time. But due to the eventual fall off from replay I just can not give it a higher ratting then above average.

If you’re a parent and looking at this game I would say it is closer to a 13 or 14 if you have kids you could play this game with or as an introduction to board and card games for them. But overall it come in at an eleven for me.