Advert: We received a loaned copy of the game from Minor Disaster Games via the UK Board Game Review Circle. This was a prototype so components and gameplay are subject to change. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

In space, no one can hear you scream…in frustration as your newly fixed thingamajig gets ANOTHER electrical fault and explodes in flames for the eleventy-billionth time. Uh oh, there’s Trouble on the Tempus!

👥 1 to 5 players
⌛ 60 to 120 minutes
🧠 10 years+

Gameplay overview:

You and your crewmates are stuck aboard your dysfunctional spaceship, the Tempus, which is currently floating aimlessly and disintegrating around you. All YOU have to do is keep on top of the ever-increasing disasters long enough to get the hyperdrive fixed and get the heck outta here.

Fortunately, the Tempus is pimped up with some nifty new-fangled spacey wacey timey wimey technology, which you can use to perform localised time jumps and get your team back to when the ship started to break down. Unfortunately, you can only do this so many times before time paradoxes cause reality to collapse in on itself. Can you use what you learn about the impending disasters, reset time and do what needs to be done to get that hyperdrive fixed? Or will you, and the Tempus, be lost in time and space?

This is a co-operative game, where each player takes on the role of one of the crew with their own special ability, like taking extra movement or removing ship damage without needing equipment. All players start on the ship’s bridge, and as the game progresses they run about to deal with whatever crises may occur. The hyperdrive – which needs fixing ASAP, remember – is alllll the way at the back of the ship. What’s wrong with the ship depends on the hyperdrive card in play for that game, but it usually involves a shedload of damage on the hyperdrive and various other ship locations, with the odd fire and electrical malfunction thrown in if you’re lucky.

On your turn, you can move up to two spaces and take an action. You can do them in either order, but you can’t take an action half way through moving (unless you’re playing the character with the ability to do the action mid-movement). Actions can include picking up, trading or using items (equipment and wear), using your character’s special ability or activating a location ability. These actions are usually to put out fires, fix electrical faults, remove damage, heal wounds or opening/closing doors on the ship (this helps stop fire and damage from spreading). 

Once all the players have had a turn, it’s time to check for any carnage (known as the consequences phase). Too much damage to the fuel cells? The ship explodes and you die. Too much damage on the shield generator or too many electrical faults on the ship? The shields get lowered – if they’re lowered too much the ship explodes and – you guessed it – you die! Too much damage to the life support system? You take a wound and MAY die (if you’re too wounded, that is). Too much damage to the Airlock? It’s now open, you may get sucked into space and DIE. It’s not all that bad though, if there are any fires, you only place more damage…although if you’re ever in a location that gets a fire/electrical fault/damage token you get a wound sooooo…you may die. And if you run out of tokens to place the ship explodes and you will, again, be very much dead.

So yeah, essentially there are a lot of different ways to die in this game. If at any point your character gets too many wounds and dies, they drop all their items and are removed from the board. If someone is still alive long enough to perform a time jump, dead characters come back to life as time resets. But if everyone dies, like if the ship explodes or everyone gets too wounded, then it’s game over.

And the excitement isn’t over, because every round new disasters strike! Yay! The top of the disaster deck is turned over, revealing either a minor or major disaster – they’re all bad, just some are badder than others. Minor disasters can involve new fires, new electrical faults, faulty doors, and so on (and with more players, more bad things happen). Major disasters involve EXPLOSIONS in a designated area of the ship, which spreads damage and fire, and knocks every one over (it costs an action to stand up next turn).

Now, I know it sounds like things are dire, but don’t forget you can TIME TRAVEL! At any point, if a player gets back to the Time Drive on the Bridge, they can use an action to time jump, taking the game back to its starting position. Dead friends materialise. You still have your wounds, BUT now you have knowledge. Knowledge of what is about to come, what is going to go wrong when. And, if you’re playing on trainee mode, you also still have the items you picked up. So you’re (hopefully) in a better position to tackle the oncoming disasters.

When you time jump, a Time Paradox card is placed on top of the disaster deck, before the disaster discard pile gets put back on top in the same order as before. This means as you play through the game (again), the disaster cards will come up in the same order. But once you get to the same point you reached last time, the Time Paradox is revealed and resolved. They trigger different effects, can last anywhere from one round until the next time jump, and are not usually a Good Thing.

You can only time jump three times before the time paradox gets out of hand. If you fail to fix the ship and save the day before that third Time Paradox card is drawn, your team gets lost in the void of time and the Tempus blinks out of existence.

Our first impressions:

We were super excited to get on board the Tempus – Matt especially as he’s super keen on the sci-fi space theme. And overall the theme carries through the gameplay really well, especially the innovative time jump factor. The only thing that’s really missing is some flavour text on the hyperdrive cards (and maybe the disaster deck) to add to the immersion and story. There are already hints of this in the rulebook and item cards (which have a nice little splash of humour), we’d just like to see more!

It’s been a while since we played a co-operative game (which is amazing because for a long time that was all we played!) and we really enjoyed working together to try and tackle the ever increasing problems on the ship. It was tense and challenging – which you would expect for a game about a spaceship collapsing around you! Definitely expect to lose… a lot!

We really enjoyed working together to try and tackle the ever increasing problems on the ship. It was tense and challenging – which you would expect for a game about a spaceship collapsing around you!

Saying that, we did find 2 player games were a little TOO hard, maybe even impossible in some scenarios – and that was on the ‘trainee’ set-up (where there’s fewer major disasters and players always get to keep their items when they time jump). It felt like having two characters wasn’t enough to keep up with the damage and disasters. Instead, we found controlling 2 characters each (so playing a ‘4-player’ game) a much better experience. Even then, the trainee set-up was tough and still felt like you were being thrown in at the deep end, so we think an even more entry level option would be good – one that really eases you into the gameplay.

There’s a lot of opportunity for variability in the game, particularly with the random numbers that get assigned to various locations during set-up; these numbers are what the disaster cards use to direct where new disasters and explosions take place. And then there’s the different difficulty set-ups, different hyperdrive scenarios (which also range in difficulty) and 8 different characters to play with, each with their own unique ability. Every game feels different!

The rulebook was clear and easy to refer back to. Given that there is a lot going on in the game, the rulebook did a great job of breaking down the different actions, consequences, tokens and disasters. I like the little touches of character and humour to the writing as well. There’s a handy quick reference on the back of the rules, but some player aids would be a great addition.

Final thoughts:

Trouble on the Tempus is a challenging and original take on the co-operative genre with a unique time travel mechanic that boosts the theme into hyperspace.

If you like Pandemic-style games, this game has a similar vibe – but in SPACE! Trouble on the Tempus is a challenging and original take on the co-operative genre with a unique time travel mechanic that boosts the theme into hyperspace. Overall, we had a great time aboard the Tempus – despite the constant onslaught of disasters!

Minor Disaster Games are launching Trouble on the Tempus on Kickstarter on 27th May so be sure to check it out! And they’ll be at UKGE at the end of the month demoing Trouble on the Tempus on their stall (location 2-787) – so if you’re at UKGE make sure to stop by for your own relaxing trip on the Tempus!