Apologies for the long read. This game utilizes 6 different ages of time, from ancient to modern. The game board is 6 different square boards arranged clockwise around a central hexagon. The map in each age is the same location but a different look/feel due to the resource availability in that age. Also, each age progresses or becomes more “modern”. Age 1 is coal age, age 2 bronze, age 3 silver, age 4 gold, age 5 steam or diamond, age 6 platinum. The map is an aerial view of a city that involves several blocks, including a mine. In the center of the game board (the central hexagon) is a gear train (wooden or plastic meshed spur gears), and each gear is controlled by a specific resource. The gear train is assembled, and represents a world clock or time travel device that can control where the players may go, as long as they have the resources to control the device. The gears increase in size from age 1 to age 6.
The pieces involved in the game are: the gear train gears, each player’s pawn, poker chips for money, dice, and a massive amount of cards (probably 6 decks).
The city maps have a variety of buildings, businesses, apartments, and houses, which need to placed at the beginning of the game (possibly randomly placed by dice rolls, and need to determine if each land plot needs to be lettered and numbered). All players start in one specific age, and you cannot leave that age until you have the resource to control the device. For example, if your in age 1, you need coal to drive the machine forward or backward in time: so you need a forward control (because you can’t wormhole from age 1 to age 699,999) and some coal. The central gear in the very center of the board has a hand which stretches out to the inside border of each age, telling you what age you are currently on. Since each gear is a different size from smaller to greater, the coal age (age 1) has the smallest gears. That means it takes a lot of turns for the central gear (the largest gear, with the hand on it) to move. If you were in age 4 and were controlling the time device with the resource gold, it would not take that many turns to move to the next age, possibly only 3 or 4 gold cards (turns of the current gear) to make the age gear move. If you have a platinum card and you are in platinum age, that 1 card will move you to the next age guaranteed since you are controlling the largest gear (the gear with the hand pointer on it)
I am still struggling with the main objective of the game like I do with all of my board game ideas, but I think the story will be that all the player’s time travel devices in their homes have been displaced by a doomsday device, and each player is trying to collect parts and resources from the different ages to get it running again.
Each age would have its own deck of cards, and in each deck are different classifications of cards: resource, parts, bonus, etc. A card you pull in the platinum age might be “The crusher at the mine has produced an ounce of platinum”, so you must place that card at the mine. The first player to arrive at the mine and can afford the platinum gets to purchase it. The poker chips are placed at the mine in the platinum age so any player can sell other rocks/stones to that shop. Each resource or tool card has simple financial information on it like buy 5/sell 3. You can buy it for 5 or sell it for 3 to the correct shop. Shops in the city might include: blacksmith/forge, hardware store, mine, jewelry shop, lumber camp/sawmill, locksmith, bank, etc. Items and resources are quite specific so you can’t sell stones at the hardware store, but you can sell stones to mine and jewelry shop. You can sell precious metals to hardware, blacksmith, and jewelry shop.
Each player’s turn will be short and simple, involving either a move and action, or action and move. That means the player will be rolling dice to see how many spaces they get to move from the present location for the move part. The action part can be a choice: buy/sell in a shop you are standing in, controlling the time device, or assembling your own machine.
I’m attempting to take these complex ideas and present it in a simple way. The basic core fun ideas are the gear train time travel device and the different resources per age. I’d like to retain those two ideas without making the game complicated so it can be played in 1.5-2 hours as a family game. I really like using the accumulation type of income, especially when you can store up several resource cards to time travel great distance at one time. I realize the cost issue with the gears, which would probably end up having to be plastic (although wood preferred). The gears need to be able to be easily turned so the would need to be a decent size. I’m a carpenter/woodworker/designer so building the gear train prototype in the woodshop is not an issue. I actually want the theme of this game to be steampunk style and the card and board design would reflect that.
The beauty and what I imagine originality of the game is the meshed gears, but due to anticipated costs, I considered other options like using numbers and dials to represent the ages: from year 1 to 600,000. you would turn the proper interval dial depending on what resource you are using (see top).
