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I first heard of Legacy: Gears of Time well after it had released, when the creator was publicizing his Kickstarter project to get funding for an expansion of the game (which I'll review at a future date). I looked into the game at that time, came really close to pre-ordering it and helping to fund the project, but at the last minute didn't because I'd been getting a little too involved in Kickstarter projects recently and had promised my wife that I'd cut back.

Fast forward a few months, and you will find me at the gaming convention GenCon in Indianapolis, near where I live. The folks at Floodgate Games, the makers of Legacy: Gears of Time, had a booth there and I got to play a demo. I fell in love with this game ... not only in its own right, but as an educational tool to give young people a sense of how technology grows and progresses. But, honestly, mostly because it's just a lot of fun. And it has time travel.

The Mechanics - How the Game Works

Okay, so here's the basic low-down on the game. The game board is a relatively narrow board that is used for keeping the deck of cards and a discard pile, using tokens to keep track of the rounds and turns, turn order among the players, and player scores. Most of the "action" in the game takes place at the lower edge of the board, which represents a "timeline" ... a series of segments of time in which the game is played, using cards that are laid out below the board itself.

All players begin the game in the "present" time segment, which is in roughly the middle of the board ...

although with more players, the present shifts a bit. (My description will be assuming a two-player game, which is mostly what I've played, unless I specify otherwise.) So you start in the middle of the board in the "present" time segment, and each turn consists of three actions from the following list:

• Travel to the past
• Establish a technology
• Influence an existing technology
• Draw 2 cards from the draw pile, keep 1

In addition, you may play a Fate Card as a free action. There are only 6 Fate Cards in the whole deck, though, so this doesn't happen too often. Fate cards are useful one-time actions that can shift the game balance, such as moving any player (including yourself) forward or backward in time one segment. (This is the only way to move forward in time until the end of the round, when you return to the present.)

After four turns, the round ends and you return to the present, gaining points for the functional technologies that you currently control. After four of these rounds (a total of 16 turns for all players), the game is over and the player with the most points wins.

The Mood - How Does It Work Again?

Technologies

So you move back in time, establishing these technologies, such as "Railroads" or "The Internet." But the technologies only work (and you only get points for them) if certain pre-existing technologies also exist. You can establish the "Combustion Engine," but it does not work until someone goes further back in time to establish "Fire" and "The Wheel."

Both "Fire" and "The Wheel," though, are considered "Fundamental" technologies. They have no pre-requisites. Once you put them in play, they automatically work. This doesn't mean you're home free, though. If someone goes further back in time and establishes the same technology, then your technology card (which was developed later) goes away ... because who cares that you discovered The Wheel in 500 AD when someone else discovered it in 1,000 BC, after all! (These are just random times I'm throwing out ... the time segments in the game don't correspond to any specific real-world dates.)

Influence

Okay, so you go back in time, establishing these technologies. As you establish a technology, you also put Influence tokens on them, depending on the value of the card. One Influence token goes away from each card each Round, and it's possible for someone to come along and put more Influence tokens on a card that you Influence, thus gaining control of that technology (and getting the points for it in the scoring round).

Also, certain technologies are so important that they get bonus points for more advanced technologies, so it's possible to get a real synergy effect by controlling a fundamental technology, such as "Logic" or "Basic Sciences," that influences a lot of other established technologies further up in the timeline.

Influence is also important because if no one influences a technology at the end of the round, then that technology card goes away! For a fundamental technology, this can have devastating consequences, as all down-timeline cards that depended on that technology suddenly stop working (and thus stop awarding points). Players therefore have reason to go back in time and make sure they are influencing early technologies, rather than just establishing them once and focusing on high-end (and high point value) technologies like "Genetics," "The Internet," and "Space Travel."

Other Stuff

One other element of the game is that each player has a specific character card, which grants some bonus points for controlling a certain type of technology, based on the character's unique personality and background.

Each time segment in the game has a limit on the number of technologies it can hold, with earlier timelines able to hold more technologies. As the game progresses with each round, the "present" moves up one time segment, and all the earlier time segments gain the ability to hold an extra technology card. This is tracked through components included in the box, with roman numerals on the timeline clearly indicating how many technologies any time segment can hold at a given time.

The Components - What Comes in the Box

• 66 Technology Cards
• 6 Fate Cards
• 100 Influence Cubes
  • 25 white cubes
  • 25 yellow cubes
  • 25 red cubes
  • 25 blue cubes
• 2 Turn/Round Indicator Gears
• 4 Player Markers (white/yellow/red/blue)
• 4 Character Cards
• 1 Timeline Game Board
• 1 Present Day Marker
• 6 Timeframe Capacity Markers
• 8 Legacy 50-Point Tokens
• 1 Operator's Guidebook (Rulebook)

Conclusion

It's perhaps a stretch to call this an educational game, or possibly even to call this a scientific game, but that's still how I think of it, though it's certainly loads of fun outside of any sort of educational context. Fundamentally, this game is about understanding that scientific concepts and technological advancements build on their predecessors. Sir Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," and I do think this game can help to internalize that very important aspect of scientific knowledge ... in fact, of any knowledge.



Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.