Trouble on the Tempus

About this board game

Trouble on the Tempus is a cooperative disaster-management game for 2–5 players, with sessions lasting about 120 minutes. Trapped aboard a time machine that is falling apart, players must work together to repair the ship’s hyperdrive and find a way home.

The Tempus is beset by fires, electrical faults, and mechanical failures. Its science officers have jury-rigged the time drive to make highly localized jumps, allowing the crew to travel back to moments before disaster strikes. The task is impossible to complete in a single attempt, so survival depends on learning from each failed timeline.

When the time drive is engaged, the board resets to its starting state. The crew retains its knowledge of when and where disasters will appear, creating opportunities to gather the right equipment, move into position, and pre-empt future emergencies. Each repeated timeline brings the players closer to predicting enough rounds to fix the hyperdrive.

• Cooperative play focused on disaster management
• Fires, electrical faults, and mechanical failures to overcome
• Time travel that resets the board while preserving vital knowledge
• Equipment collection and positioning to prepare for known disasters
• A paradox system that lets players adjust the game’s difficulty

Time travel comes at a cost: every jump creates a paradox. Cause too many, and reality may collapse, leaving the crew facing a fate worse than destruction in deep space. In Trouble on the Tempus, success comes from repeating the timeline carefully, turning catastrophe into information, and coordinating one final attempt to power the ship home.