Trekking Through History for your next Family Board Game Night
At our house, we enjoy playing family board games. It’s a fun way for us to spend time together away from screens. Last year we even learned the game creation and playtest process when we created our own game called Shape Farm. A favorite way to celebrate birthdays are game nights with family friends, and we are always on the lookout for new games to play and share with them. Both of our families homeschool and both families love educational games that help us learn while we play.
When I learned about Trekking Through History, the newest educational game from Underdog Games, I knew it would be a hit for all of us and I wasn’t wrong. After we played a few times, we let our friends borrow it and we haven’t seen it since! After getting a text about their family becoming “slightly addicted to it,” I’m not sure when we are getting our game back!
One of our favorite parts of our homeschool is reading about history together, whether it’s historical fiction or our four-volume history book. We are always fascinated at how the world has changed and yet how so many of the conflicts stay the same.
Trekking Through History is an educational game that lets us review our world history in a fun new way as we strategize and compete to build timelines of world history. There are 108 historical moments included in the game, and some of the events were brand new to us. We’ll be keeping it on our gameschooling shelf to use during schooltime.
How this Educational Game Works
The game setup has 3 parts: there is the playmat where History Cards are played and points are tracked, there is the clock where each player’s pocket watches move around the board to track the hours in the day, and there is each person’s personal playing space which includes their Time Crystal Tank and itinerary for the Day.
There is strategy in each of these three playing spaces so there is lots to think about as you play. But unlike some of our other favorite strategy games, this one takes less than an hour to play! Points are scored by connecting History Cards into Timelines: the longer the timeline you are able to build, the more points it’s worth.
Points are also scored by collecting Benefits from your History Cards in the right pattern on your daily itinerary. Itinerary points are tracked as you play on the playmat but Timeline points aren’t added until the end of the third day of Time Traveling adventure.
The game has the right mix of chance and strategy so that everytime you play it’s a new game and you have to think on your feet. There are Time Warp cards you can add once you are familiar with the game to add more challenges and surprises to your time traveling adventure.
Time is the Great Equalizer
There are many design details included in Trekking Through History that make you think. One of my favorites is the Clock. The turn taking does not go around clockwise like most board games. The player’s pocket watches are stacked randomly at the 12th hour to start the game. The person whose timepiece is on top goes first and the turns continue down the stack.
Each History Card costs a set number of hours, which is how far you move around the clock. The day ends when all the players return to the 12th hour. A game is 3 days long. As the Pocket Watches move around the clock to mark each day of time travel, the piece that is furthest behind always goes next. This means that at times a player may go more than once in a row and another player may wait extra long for their next turn.
Each player has a Crystal Tank for storing Time Crystals that are earned throughout the game, and they serve the function of giving you extra turns, if used correctly.
What makes it fair is everyone has the same finite number of spaces to travel on the clock game board. Everyone only has the 12 spaces on the clock to make the most of time traveling, but how they use that time is up to them, just like in real life throughout history. Time is a great equalizer, everyone spends it at the same rate regardless of wealth or location.
Racing Through History
How many hours you travel in a turn is determined by the historical event you add to the timeline in your hand. Each player earns points based on how long of a timeline they can build. The game includes 108 historical events from 37,000 BC-1985 AD, and covering ancient and modern events from every continent and culture. The adults were learning about new history events alongside the kids as we played.
My daughter said while we were playing, “I didn’t think I was a history nerd but I know lots of these history events and I love that!” Many of the more obscure events were familiar to her from one of her favorite books, Rejected Princesses, a book about strong women throughout history and folklore and their adventures.
Is this a good Family Game Night choice for Outside the Box Kids?
The suggested age for Trekking Through History is 10+. We played with our gifted nine year old and while he loves history, the strategy was harder for him to grasp. World history is one of the special interests at our house so for the interest factor it is a great game for us.
There are a lot of things to think about so for younger abilities it is better played on a team with a parent or sibling. Each turn has enough tasks to share with younger person.
The game length makes it good for shorter attention spans as well. There is a lot of thinking and strategy during the game play but you can be done in an hour or less. Since the turn taking is irregular we found it helpful to have some fidgets nearby to use when our pocket watch was in the lead.
For teens who like history this is a great choice for family game night. You might even have time for more than one Time Traveling Adventure in a single night!
The only question left to ask is where in time will you travel first?
