That Time You Killed Me

That Time You Killed Me is a game where players – one of whom, in the game’s narrative, invented time travel, and the other a usurper – travel through past, present and future to try and defeat each other. Although the game is essentially an abstract in the tradition of Chess, Go and others, played on a series of grids with restricted movement the theme holds up well: three boards represent past, present and future, and each action on past/present has potential ramifications for present/future.

Each player starts with three pieces: one on each board, and four more such pieces in your supply. On each turn you only activate one of your pieces, and take two actions. The basic one is move: you can move one space orthogonally in your current ‘tense’. But you can also move forward to the next tense: ie jump from past to present, or present to future, landing in the equivalent spot. And, if you have any pieces in your supply, you can also travel back through time: when you do so, the current tense clones a new piece (from your supply) into the square it vacated, and you take any remaining action in the tense you travelled back to.

Your goal is to eliminate the opposition from 2 of the 3 tenses, and you do that by pushing (ie moving into) them against the wall of the grid: that piece is then removed from the game – it doesn’t go back to your supply, which means the number of times you can go back in time is very limited: time travel is tricky!

But That Time You Killed Me isn’t content with this time-traversing wrestling match. It also supplies the ongoing narrative of a campaign game where players can manipulate other elements, hopefully in their favour. No spoilers here, but in the introductory game you can plant seeds which will grow into shrubs (in the next tense) and trees (in the one after). Seeds are navigable, but shrubs and trees act like walls – pieces can be pushed against them – and trees can also be pushed over: and onto opposing pieces, removing them from the game.

Any of That Time You Killed Me’s campaign aspects can be played over and over, so completing the campaign doesn’t mean the game is no longer playable. But it does get more bonkers the further you go!