Review: Shows an image of the box for Chrononauts that's decorated with a swirl of numbers going into an energy vortex

Review of Chrononauts: A Time Travelling TTRPG Card Game

I really enjoyed getting to check out Chrononauts, which is a card-based time travelling role-playing game about creating new realities, searching for artifacts, and… maybe also accidentally collapsing reality.  It’s an interesting way to engage with history, and, I think, has lots of opportunities for teaching about how key events, both in the past and now, have an impact on the future.

*Note: the version of the game that I played was a demo copy lent to me by Loonely Labs that includes several expansions, so my pictures have an extra row of cards than the base game and some new characters, goals, and other cards mixed in.

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Audience for Chrononauts

Chrononauts is rated for ages 11+ (so tweens, teens, and adults), and I’d say that tracks.  

Mechanically, it’s pretty easy to pick up and requires some reading from the cards in your hand so you know what to do and what your win conditions are. That means, the reason for the 11+ recommendation is because there’s real historical events used in this game. 

Players are going to need to be able to handle hearing that wars happened, be able to mention death, and, if playing with some of the expansions, process more recent events in a group setting. I’d recommend that folks read through the cards you’re using before playing with kids to just make sure you’re all OK with the content, and then you should be good to go.

Two of the character cards from Chrononauts, one from the expansions and one from the base game. One card is for Mason, a time traveller from the expansion who ran over himself in a car during a time traveling mission. The other is for Betty who went back in time to stop the JFK assassination.
Two of the character cards from Chrononauts, one from the expansions and one from the base game.

I do think this is a GREAT game for teaching kids in that 11+ range about history and historical cause and effect (these are both core learning goals for middle school social studies standards, and I break down teaching these concepts with games in class here… also with a time travel game).   Seeing how WWII happened because of so many earlier key points or thinking about what would happen if the JFK assassination was prevented can help with not only learning that those events took place but that events today will change the future that’s coming for us (so we need to be mindful). 

Setting for Chrononauts

Chrononauts is set across time!  It starts with our current “real” timeline, and as your characters explore and mess around with it, it changes.  The playing field is literally our timeline and so many variant alternative versions of that timeline. 

When I played with others, it was a bit chaotic trying to take pictures, so I conducted a sample  “3 character” game for myself so I could show how this played out.  These pictures are from my sample game and show the before and after from that game’s timeline!  

a photo of the starting game board with all cards facing upright
a photo of the end game gameboard with several cards flipped to show that they were altered.

Characters in Chrononauts

Your characters in Chrononauts are time travellers, each with a different story, and a different home timeline.  These details are shown on your character card, so there’s no character creation needed, and it sets you up with everything needed to roleplay their story. 

At the top of your card, you’ll see the conditions for the timeline that this character came from and will need to create in the playable game timeline to get back home, which is one of the potential win conditions.

I will also note that you don’t HAVE to super roleplay your character, but… it can be pretty fun (and impactful with the concept of imaging the alternative timelines you’re playing with).

a photo of the final hands from my example game
Final hands from my example game (Armstrong won by recreating his target timeline, and Betty would have won the next turn with the same condition, so it was close!)

Mechanics of Chrononauts

Chrononauts is set up with a timeline playing field using a set of cards.  These cards represent key events in history. 

Your goal is to do one of the following

  • Alter the timeline in front of you to create the home conditions on your character card
  • Complete a mission assigned to you on a mission card (i.e. collecting the right artifact cards)
  • Collect 10 cards in your hand, which represents having massive power and success throughout time

You start with three cards from the main Chrononauts deck, and each turn you will draw one new card and then play or discard a card from your hand.  When you play a card, you do what the card says. 

The cards that you play could be an artifact to collect towards that second goal OR could be a one-time use action that helps you out OR could be an inverter card that changes key points in time to help you reach your first goal OR could be a time patch that helps you repair a change someone made OR… there’s more.   There’s lots of variation in what you can draw, so you pretty much are going to strategize with what’s in your hand, and each of the cards in your hand also has the rules and symbols associated with it right on the card, so you don’t have to memorize a bunch of moves or anything. 

The cards on the timeline field ALSO pretty much tell you what to do too, and it’s really fun to see how time ripples occur.  If you play a card that lets you stop the JFK assassination in 1963, you flip that card over… and then also need to flip over any cards further down in the timeline that this card impacts.  The affected years are listed on the lynchpin card, and you then check if those affected years (like Apollo 11 Landing on the Moon) meet all the conditions to also be flipped over (some cards require multiple lynchpins) and create a paradox.  Paradoxes are needed for players to meet their goal to go home and win, but… some paradoxes may conflict with another player’s goal, and too many paradoxes mean the universe collapses and everyone loses, so you also have patches that you can play to repair the timeline.

a photo of the full final "board" for my example game, displaying the final timeline and the hands of all of the players.
The full final “board” for my example game

It ends up with everyone chasing each other around changing time back and forth, stealing artifacts from each other to meet their mission goals, finding ways to stockpile cards, and outsmarting their other timetravellers with things like using a card that allows you to block their move by sending a note to your past self!  

And, there’s some more rules to this too (like getting extra cards for certain tasks and what happens if you mess with WWII too much) but, as always, I want to leave a bit for you to discover when you play the game yourself too.

Overall thoughts on Chrononauts

Chrononauts was REALLY fun.  This is one of those games that is easy to learn but very thinky to play, and keeps the attention from turn to turn.  It’s fast-paced and chaotic and forces you to rethink your strategy constantly as other players are interacting with the game for their own goals while also being an interesting thought experiment as you watch history twist in front of you.  I so badly cannot wait to meet up with one of my friends who is a gamer and middle grade history teacher to play this with, and I want to use this once kiddo is a bit older as well to kick off some discussions about history before they get too far into it at school.  Overall, I really enjoyed this and see Chrononauts as being a fun game as it is and a great potential teaching tool for youth getting into those middle school history classes.

Find a copy of Chrononauts

You can find a copy of Chrononauts through Looney Labs!

a photo from the Looney Labs page showing a sample Chrononauts box and cards

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