Welcome to my review of Times! If you’ve ever argued with friends about who remembers more useless facts, this game might just be for you. I dragged a few pals around my table, grabbed some snacks, and tested whether Times is a trivia treat or a ticking time bomb. Spoiler: there’s both laughter and a little frustration ahead. Let’s see if it’s worth fighting over who gets to be scorekeeper.
How It Plays
Setting Up
Open the box, grab the cards, timer and score pad. Give everyone something to write with. Shuffle the deck and place it in the middle. Each player should have a piece of paper ready to go. Make sure the timer works and doesn’t mysteriously shave off precious seconds (looking at you, dodgy hourglass).
Gameplay
On your turn, read a card out loud. It’ll ask for things like “Movies with talking animals.” Everybody, including you, scribbles down as many answers as possible before the timer runs dry. When time’s up, everyone shares answers. If two people have the same answer, those cancel out and don’t count. Only unique answers get you points. Prepare for some creative, totally questionable entries like “Sharknado.” The group judges all disputes. Play moves to the next player with a fresh card.
Winning the Game
Keep playing rounds until someone reaches the target score (usually 15 or 20). That player is crowned trivia champion and gets bragging rights until the next rematch, or until their friends refuse to play with them again.
Want to know more? Read our extensive strategy guide for Times.
Gameplay Mechanics and Fairness in Times: Clocking the Good and the Not-So-Good
When I cracked open Times for the first time, I expected a few twists, but I didn’t expect to question my friendships as much as I questioned the fairness of the game. That’s not a knock—there’s fun in debate, but let’s break down what works and what nearly sent my game group back to playing Uno.
The main draw of Times is its time-traveling mechanic, which forces players to plan turns ahead but also react to some wild, timey-wimey events. The decisions you make in round one ripple through the whole game. Sometimes, you feel like a genius for setting up a killer combo. Other times, you wish you had the power to banish last turn’s Jamie into a time loop. That kind of depth kept us glued to the table (and our snacks), always sweating over the right move.
But, and there’s always a but—Times leans a bit too much on luck for my taste. If you snag the right event card at just the right, uh, time, you’ll pull ahead at warp speed. If you have my luck, you’re watching others zip around the timeline while you’re stuck in the prehistoric era wondering why you even invented the wheel. Some balancing issues here; if you like pure strategy, this might tick you off. But for families and forgiving friends, it’s mostly harmless.
In the next section, let’s see if Times puts the ‘party’ in time party or just makes us want to clock out.
How Much Fun Can You Have With Friends? Player Interaction and Engagement in Times
If you’ve ever watched your friends at a game night slowly drift off to scroll Instagram, you know the pain of a boring board game. Luckily, Times does not fall into that trap—at least not most of the time. The game is packed with little moments where you actually need to pay attention to what your friends do (or in my case, their wild guesses about every historical event ever).
Here’s what I liked: Times gets everyone talking and second-guessing each other. You have to work out where to place your cards on the timeline, but, more importantly, you have to ask yourself, ‘Is Greg really sure that the invention of velcro happened before sliced bread?’ (Spoiler: he was not.) We spent half the round laughing at each other’s weird logic. Plus, there’s a bit of bluffing, so if your poker face is as bad as mine, expect some heckling.
What didn’t thrill me was that once you’ve played a few games, some players start to dominate the table. You know, that one person who actually paid attention in history class and now won’t shut up about it. It doesn’t ruin the experience, but if you’re in a group where one person knows all the answers, the interaction can start to feel a bit one-sided.
Still, with the right crowd, Times is a chatty, noisy, often hilarious game. Next, I’ll tell you all about how often you’ll want to play it and whether you’ll have time to finish before someone falls asleep on the sofa…
How Many Times Will You Want to Play Times?
Let’s talk about replay value and game length, because Times pulls a sneaky trick here. You’d think a trivia game would get stale fast, but this one keeps things fresh with an absolute mountain of questions and a mix of topics. The range is wild. My group played five times (fitting, right?), and only repeated two questions. That’s less repeat than the number of snacks I drop on the floor in a session.
Each round lasts about 35 minutes, though that depends on how much trash talk your friends do. My group? We’re extra, so we stretched it to an hour with arguments and side bets about which year Jurassic Park came out. (It’s 1993, for the record, but don’t trust Brad—he’ll say 1995 just to mess with you.)
If you play with different people, it’s like a new game each time. My family played with my trivia-obsessed friend group, then I brought it home for a chill night with my parents. Turns out, Times works well for both. It even made my dad, who usually claims he’s ‘not a board game guy’, ask for another round. The game’s got legs. Even if you do run into repeat questions, remembering answers always feels weirdly rewarding.
The only problem? If you’ve got that one friend who memorizes every answer, it can feel a bit lopsided after a while. But for most groups, you can get a ton of value from Times before needing a break. And with the quick setup, you can squeeze in a session whenever you’ve got about half an hour to spare.
But enough about length—next, let’s see if the pieces are as fun to look at as the game is to play. Brace yourself for tales of cardboard glory!
Eye Candy and Hand Feel: Times Delivers (Mostly)
Let’s talk about what you actually see and touch when you play Times. Now, I’ve seen my fair share of board games that think “high quality components” means a stack of floppy cards and a rulebook that looks like it survived a dog attack. Times, thankfully, knows how to treat your eyeballs and your fingers.
First off, the cards in Times are sturdy. We played through greasy pizza fingers and a few dramatic mid-game table slaps, and I’m happy to report the cards held up. No bent corners or weird stains, even after my friend Sam tried to open his soda one-handed (don’t ask). The print quality is crisp, which is important because if you can’t read the trivia, what’s the point?
The artwork is simple but cheerful. Don’t expect anything you’d frame over your fireplace. But the bright colors pop and the design makes it clear what each card is for. It’s not as fancy as some games out there (no miniatures or glow-in-the-dark dice), but it does the job. The box is sturdy and fits all the bits, which shouldn’t be rare but somehow is.
On the downside, I wish they’d included card sleeves or something for long-term protection, but for the price point, I get it. Also, the hourglass timer we got was a little inconsistent—sometimes it ran a bit fast, which made for some hurried answers and a lot of yelling.
Would I recommend Times for its components? Yes, unless you’re one of those people who starts sleeving everything the second you open a box. For everyone else, it’s solid and ready for game night disasters.
Conclusion
So, that wraps up my review of Times! I’ve had a blast with this game, arguing about useless facts and timing my friends as they scramble for answers. If you like trivia, speedy rounds, and a healthy bit of chaos, Times is a solid pick. The cards hold up, the timer is… well, a bit off sometimes, and yes, trivia nerds might walk away grinning while everyone else questions their education. Luck sometimes overshadows skill, and that keeps it from being a masterpiece. But hey, for family nights or parties, you could do a lot worse. Just don’t let the timer distract you like it did me—or you’ll end up giving the wrong answer for the capital of Belgium (it’s not “Belgian Waffles”).
