As I grow older, I begin to notice a trend that many things are following. That trend follows a rule that goes something like this: “It is what it is.” The rule has proven to be almost infallible, and I have accepted it as gospel in my life. A few examples of this trend would be that next time that a game is made into a movie, it’s going to suck. Or anytime Wizards of the Coast makes an overly high casting cost Blue Magic card, it’s going to be dominant win championships. (I fought hard to not insert a “If LeBron James tries to do something, he is going to quit” blast here, but in the end, I decided not do it...). Lastly, if Looney Labs is releasing a new card game, I need to get it because it’s going to be a blast!

This time around, Looney Labs reveals a new card game called Back to the Future: The Card Game (BttF). I came across this release while I was reading their August Newsletter. I stopped reading dead in my tracks and placed my media review request immediately upon reading about the game. I still haven’t finished reading that newsletter yet, but I have in my hands now a review copy of the card game, and I want to check it out with you.

Upon pulling off the mail packing envelope like a little boy on Christmas morning, I found inside a box that is pretty much the same size as the box for Chrononauts and Are You the Traitor?. Breaking open the cellophane, I was greeted by the same slightly “Looney” art that has become their trademark.

I sifted through the cards at this point and a thought came to my mind right away... “This reminds me of Chrononauts!” I like Chrononauts a lot, so this is a good thing for me. The box contained a series of timeline cards, artifacts, Player IDs and other cards that a Chrononauts vet would recognize.

Next I unfolded the rules sheet; only to get a laugh when one of the first lines in the rules is, “Don’t think that since you have played Chrononauts that you know how to play BttF”. Reading through the rules, I would concur with Mr. Rules Sheet. I didn’t know how to play the game, but now I do and I still find the game smooth playing, fast pace, and interesting all at the same time.

In BttF, you play as a mystery person from the future (determined by randomly selecting a Player ID card), just as in Chrononauts, except that you are a future descendent of one of the many characters found in the movie series. Your objective is to go back in time and make the timeline happen exactly how it needs to occur in order for you to exist in the future. Then, as a twist on the Chrononauts rules, you need to ‘un-invent’ time travel itself to ensure that no one else can make your timeline not happen again. How do you do that? You make sure that Doc Brown never invents the flux capacitor.

That’s where this game utilizes the game mechanics of Chrononauts. It incorporates the Linchpin and Ripple Point mechanics to force a player to change a pivotal point in history in order alter other points in time. For example, one of the Player IDs is one of Doc Browns kids – Verne Brown. As a future Brown descendent, you can’t exist if your old man died in the Old West getting shot up as the Blacksmith by Buford Tannen. You also can’t have your mother falling into and dyeing in the ravine. This forces you to have to flip linchpins and ripple points in order to change time to show that Buford in fact did not kill Doc and that Doc did save Clara Clayton, which then resulted in Buford getting arrested for robbery and the two love birds get married. Later in the timeline, you must ensure that Doc gets commended for his research and not committed into the “looney’ bind.



Once you have accomplished the manipulation of the timeline to fit the description on the Player ID card, then you need to flip the linchpin that contains the event that creates this entire game -- November 5, 1955, the day that Doc Brown fell off of the toilet and bumped his nugget and thus discovered the flux capacitor. The sinister part of the game is that the game doesn’t want to end. Unlike Chrononauts, in this game there are five cards for that date instead of one like every other date. You stack the five Nov. 5, 1955 cards in a random pile and when you want to end the game, you flip the linchpin, only the top card. If that card is not the correct Nov. 5, 1955, you will get the message, “Mysterious Forces Prevents You From Changing This Event At This Time.”

It’s a dud! You then discard that fake timeline card, revealing another Nov. 5, 1955 and continue play. One of those cards is real, and upon flipping over the correct card, you will help Doc down off of that toilet without incident and time travel will never occur. Now that I think about it, isn’t that a paradox of its own, since if Doc never made the time machine, wouldn’t all of these alternate time streams not be possible, thus snapping time back to the original course that it should have taken? Why would Verne Brown want to make sure that Doc didn’t invent the time machine and thus not go back to 1885 and save his mother?

But I digress…

Another difference in this game and Chrononauts is that the artifacts that you find actually have a use in the game outside of just needing them for needing sake. There is a set of cards called Double Back, which tells you to flip a certain linchpin, but after its flipped, if you control a certain artifact, you can discard it to flip an additional linchpin. This is a very powerful effect as you can only play one card per turn, so flipping twice as many linchpins as your opponent’s is tremendously important. Other uses for the artifacts are that some are required to fuel the various time machines and some have an effect all of their own.

The other card making its return from Chrononauts is the Action card. It functions exactly the same, play the card on your turn (unless it says to otherwise), do what it says, toss it in the discard pile. These cards provide the game with slick moves like drawing cards, passing cards around, forcing players to discard, etc. These are the cards that make the game interesting and get around the, ‘draw a card / play a card’ monotony.

All in all, I found this game to be very fun and I continue to be a Looney Labs honk because every game that they have made that I played, I have come away with a great experience and Back to the Future: The Card Game is no exception. The set up and clean up time on the game is insignificant, the box itself 4 3/4” x 3 3/4” x 1” which takes up almost no space and can be fit in your collection very easily without taking up a bunch of space like a traditional board game.

The entertainment and nostalgic value of this game are more than worth the price tag. I highly encourage you to give the game a try.

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Publisher Note: The sudden resurgence in Back to the Future gives me the impression that Hollywood is putting out feelers to see how receptive we would be to additional sequals or even a straight up reboot of this series. I have seen the movies bombarding cable recently and even seen a fake spoiler on YouTube regarding this.

In addition to your comments about this Looney Labs game, I would like to hear your thoughts on more time travel movies that are based on the Back to the Future time line. Join me in the forums. -- Chris

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