Take Time is a fantastic co-op board game, so there's no surprise it wound up on the recommended list for the Spiel des Jahres

Cooperative campaign tabletop games are getting leaner and more abstract. Traditionally, campaign games have acted as stand-ins for Dungeons & Dragons, complete with big boxes that contain a multitude of parts and an equally thick rulebook. However, we’ve seen a handful of campaign games skimp on the components recently in favor of really digging into the game system and squeezing out every last variance that it can support.

Take Time, a new title designed by Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière, is a very unique cooperative campaign game that makes the most of a simplistic system. Over the course of 40 rounds (divided into 10 chapters), players will attempt to work together to solve a relatively simple puzzle using the same deck of 24 cards. Each round features a unique set of challenges to overcome, with players either succeeding or failing as a group. The result is a campaign game that’s easy to pick up, with rounds that pass by in a few minutes and chapters with unique challenges that will leave players frustrated at times but exultant when they’re finally conquered – normally a preserve of the best board games.

Take Time features & design

Take Time isn't necessarily telling a story; it's abstract, like Azul. Publisher Libellud describes it as a limited-communication game that "invites players to slow down, reflect, communicate, understand one another, and build mutual trust."

Gameplay is split into three phases – a strategy phase where players discuss potential gameplay, a placement phase in which cards are played, and a resolution phase in which players see if they’ve passed that round's requirements. To win, players must play cards (generally facedown) next to segments of a clock, aiming to have the value of each segment arranged in an ascending order. However, you can't discuss which cards you have during play. You'll need to come up with a plan beforehand and attempt to guess what your team is hoping to do next based on their actions.

For a campaign game, Take Time is remarkably simple. There are 10 chapters, each of which contains a sleeve filled with four 'clocks' (e.g. four rounds) made of solid quality paper cardstock. Each clock consists of six segments, some of which have particular rules that must be followed during the course of the game. While there is some commonality between types of rules (which usually limit which cards can be played in specific segments), every clock is unique and the rules become increasingly granular and complicated as you progress through the chapters.

Gameplay

The goal of each round in Take Time is the same – players play cards in segments, aiming to have the value of all cards played on a segment either equalling or exceeding the value of the preceding segment. Basically, players are trying to arrange their cards so they resemble the face of a clock. The catch? Players can’t discuss what cards they’re playing on their turn and the cards generally have to be played facedown, much like Sky Team. Each round essentially becomes a guessing game where you’re trying to figure out what cards are in play and trying to figure out the optimal segment to play your cards.

Complicating matters is that each clock has at least one segment with a rule limiting what cards can be played on it, represented by various symbols. Some rules are simple – such as stating that a segment has to have two cards played on it or that a card can only have Solar or Lunar cards on it. Other rules are more complex, such as stating that a segment can’t have cards of a certain number played to it or stating that the highest card in play needs to be played in a certain segment.

The other complication is that players will only use half of the deck during any round, so there’s no guarantee as to what cards will be in play. The random selection of cards particularly comes into play when dealing with segments that have high or low card requirements. While you can assume that a "low" segment will contain low cards, you can never be sure if you’re getting a 1, a 2, or something even higher.

TakeTime trailer EN - YouTube

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Players will never go into a round of Take Time totally blind though. Each round starts off with a Discussion Phase in which players can discuss general strategy options, such as where to play cards of a general value range. However, while cards are distributed to players before the discussion phase, they can’t actually look at them. So, players can only come up with a general strategy, and nothing specific to their actual hands.

Once a round starts, players have one more proverbial arrow in their quiver. On their turn, players can choose to play their card face-up. These face-up cards provide valuable information to the other players, often dictating how subsequent cards will play out. For instance, if a player plays a 7 on a segment that requires a value of 10, other players know that they need to play a 3 (or cards that add up to 3) to satisfy that requirement. At minimum, players will have three face-up cards to utilize on each round, but players get an additional bonus face-up card each time they fail a round.

In short, it's a fun challenge – but there are some niggles. One important thing to remember about the clocks is what constitutes a segment. While it might be easy to assume that a "segment" is the area between two points, it’s actually a portion of the clock consisting of a point and two line dividers. The line dividers are stylistically incorporated into the artwork of each clock, so it’s not quite intuitive. My gaming group wrongly assumed that a segment was the area in between each point, so we were confused about which segment a rule corresponded to. A good rule of thumb is to remember to play cards on points of the clock.

Should you buy Take Time?

Take Time is a fun cooperative game that mixes campaign elements with a set of simple mechanics that’s easy to learn but hard to master. Since players are never guaranteed to have the “right” cards for a specific clock, a lot of the fun comes from coming up with a strategy and then trying to implement it with an imperfect hand. However, it can be a little frustrating to play Take Time, as you’ll occasionally come up with a solid strategy but have to wait for the right hand to get dealt to implement it.

Although they’re very different games, Take Time reminds me a bit of one of my favorite games of recent years – The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game. Both games opt to dig into their respective game mechanics, exploring every nook and cranny of a rather simple set of rules as opposed to trying to overtune a game with a complex rulebook. Players will have an understanding of Take Time quickly, but mastering the game will come from understanding how to adapt their knowledge of gameplay into a series of increasingly complex scenarios.

Ultimately, Take Time is a fantastic game, which is why it ended up on the recommended list for the Spiel des Jahres. Every clock is a puzzle to conquer, and half of the fun comes from guessing how the other players are making decisions over the course of a quick-paced round. What’s even better – a failed round doesn’t cost a lot of time. Since each round takes just a few minutes to complete, a bad hand or a bad strategy won’t leave players feeling frustrated. At worst, it just takes time to beat Take Time. Well… time and a good strategy.

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