Recently I was asked to be part of the blogger board game club and of course it’s something we do a lot so I was delighted. The first of our board games to review is Science Museum Timeline. I’ve played timeline games before but never actually owned one so we were excited to try this.
My 8 year old Thomas is quite the brain box and so this game is right up his street. On his recent school report his teacher described him as ‘a walking encyclopaedia’ which made me laugh because it’s pretty accurate.
If you’re not familiar with the timeline concept of games its basically putting events in the correct order. There are now lots of variations of the same game depending on what you are in to which is great. You can get variations including events form history, star wars, inventions etc and each game comes with 110 cards so you’ll never be able to remember them all! This means you can play them again and again for long lasting play.
Science Museum timeline comes in a square tin containing the rules and 100 play cards. Each card is double sided. One side has an event or achievement based on the Science museums collection of scientific, technological or medical achievement form access the globe. The other side has the exact sam thing but also the year it happened.
Each player is dealt a certain amount of cards based on how many are playing.These are dealt with the date side down. No cheating now! Of course if you like a challenge by all means deal more! Then the remaining cards are placed date down in the centre. One card is turned face up on the table to start the game. The youngest player starts and has to compare their top card with the card on the table, and decide if it happened before or after. Once they have decided they place it date face up on the table next to the original card. Where they right? If yes it remains there, if not its discarded and they have to take a new card from the draw pile. Play then continues round the table.
Summary
The aim of the game is to be the first one to get rid of all the cards in your hand. Not quite as easy as it first appears!
What we loved about this game was that it is quick to set up. It’s simple to understand, and easy to play. The challenge comes in trying to put event dates in order. We loved that you are also learning things as you go along. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s really tricky. Another bonus is that it can be mixed with other versions of Timeline for even more game play.
What I particularly love is that it’s compact. It doesn’t take up much room and would be ideal for travel. As you can see we played ours outside in the sunshine.
If you want to buy Timeline its available from amazon here. That link is an affiliate link which means if you buy through there it costs you exactly the same but amazon will give me a couple of pence from the sale.
Thanks to Asmodee for sending us the games to play. We look forward to other games in future months!