Since Back to the Future: Back in Time is from Funko Games, the production values are great. This starts with the image of the Fluxx Capacitor on the base of the board. This adds nothing to the game play, but it is a little detail that just adds a little extra… The rulebook is not presented as a rulebook per se, but as an issue of the ‘Tales from Space’ comic book, this time containing a ‘Shocking SCIENCE-FICTION Rulebook’. The look of the cover to the comic book is matched by the game’s artwork, which is all drawn and painted in the style of a bande dessinée comic book rather than the game using stills from the film. There is no doubt that there are good film stills that could have been used in the game, but the look of Back to the Future: Back in Time is classier and all the better for not using film stills.
Underneath the board, in addition to the rulebook, you will find four Character Mats plus their Starter Power Tiles and Player Figures, three Non-Player Figures, eight dice, a Clock Dice Tower, a DeLorean Car piece, decks of Movement, Opportunity, Trouble, and Item Cards, DeLorean Part Tiles, Knockdown Tokens, a Turn Tracker, McFly Photo Sections, and a Love Meter. The board depicts the various locations in Hill Valley, including the Clock Tower, Town Square, Hill Vally High, Doc Brown’s House, and the houses of both Lorraine and George. The four Character Mats plus their Starter Power Tiles and Player Figures are for Marty, Doc, Jennifer, and Einstein—and yes, you really do play Doc Brown’s pet dog! The Character Mats depict each character, have spaces for the Starter Power Tiles with room for more, and details of each character’s Special Power. Marty McFly can move Lorraine closer to him, Doc Brown can move to the location of the DeLorean, Jennifer can move Marty, Doc, or Einstein closer to her, and Einstein can move Biff away if he is too close to him. The Power Tiles represent Actions that a player can do on his turn, including moving his Character, attempting a challenge, modifying a die roll, and using Item Cards. The three Non-Player Figures are George, Lorraine, and Biff. Throughout the game, the players will be escorting George and Lorraine to get them together and thus fall in love, whilst keeping Biff away.
The Movement Cards give instructions to move George, Lorraine, and Biff. Whereas George and Lorraine will move around the board, Biff will move towards them and if in the same location as either, will reduce the love between George and Lorraine as tracked on the Love Meter. The Opportunity Cards, each based on a scene from the film, present a chance for the players to gain an advantage. For example, ‘Provoke Biff’ Opportunity Card shows Biff and his gang chasing you in his black 1946 Ford Super De Luxe convertible and if the player is successful, he will gain an extra Power Tile and the Skateboard Item Card, whilst the ‘Get Your Damn Hands Off Her’ Opportunity Card shows George punching Biff and rewards the player by moving Biff to the School Parking Lot, knocking him down, and giving him a Knockdown Token. The Item Cards show items and pieces of equipment, many of them iconic to the film, which give a player an advantage each turn. For example, the ‘Remote Control’ Item Card enables a player to attempt a Move DeLorean Challenge from anywhere on the board, whilst with the ‘George’s Notebook’ Item Card, a player can move George closer to him. Apart from the ‘Backpack’ Item Card, which has the constant effect of granting a player more Power Tiles and is never exhausted, an Item card is exhausted after each use and it can be used every turn.
Where the Movement, Opportunity, and Item Cards are quite small, the Trouble Cards are larger and square in shape. They represent factors that will hinder the players throughout the game and come in three levels so that they get more difficult to overcome and have a greater negative the higher their level. For example, the Level One Trouble Card, ‘Strickland Looks for Slackers’, prevents anyone from attempting a ‘Fight Biff Challenge’ and if dealt with, grants a player a new Power Tile, whilst the ‘Starlighters’ Guitarist Injured’ Trouble Card is Level Three and has the chance of forcing sections of the McFly Photo to be flipped over, and if dealt with, grants a player a new Power Tile. There can only be one Trouble Card in play, but remains in play until resolved or removed from the board.
The Love Meter shows two things. One is the McFly Family Photo which depicts Marty McFly and his older siblings, Dave and Linda. The McFly Family Photo is made up of six sections that can be flipped over during play to represent their fading from the timeline. Around the edge of Love Meter is a track that runs from ‘-4’ to fifteen. The top three spaces are marked with a Heart and called the ‘Heart Zone’. If the Love Meter Cube (or marker) is in this zone, George and Lorraine are in love. The lower numbered spaces track the progress of their potentially falling in love and whilst the Love Meter Cube is in this area, there is the chance of the six sections that McFly Family Photo will fade…
Lastly, there is the Turn Tracker, which acts as a countdown towards 10:04 p.m. on November 12th, 1955 when the lightning bolt will strike the Clock Tower overlooking the Hill Valley Town Square and provide the DeLorean’s flux capacitor with the 1.21 gigawatts of pure power needed to propel it forward it in time, back to 1985. One side is intended for player with three players, which the other is for two or four. The spaces on the Turn Tracker indicated what cards are drawn on each turn, including Movement Cards and Trouble Cards and checking the Love Meter and the McFly Family Photo.
Back to the Future: Back in Time does have a lot of pieces and a few moving parts, so that it looks more complex than it actually is. A player’s turn consist of two phases. In the Turner Tracker Phase, he will move the Turn Tracker Cube along one space and resolves the instructions it gives. This will always be a Movement Card to move George, Lorraine, and Biff, but can also be adding new Trouble Card to the game board or having to check the Love Meter and the McFly Family Photo. In the Action Phase, a player uses the Power Tiles to move his character around Hill Valley and Attempt Challenges. The Starter Power Tiles—five per Character—either enable the Character to move or a particular set of dice. Some of the extra Power Tiles, which can be gained by overcoming various challenges, do exactly the same, but others do more than this, such as reroll all dice that show ‘Biff’ symbols or change the symbols rolled on the dice to another. A Power Tile can be used only once per turn, but together with his Character’s Special Power, they give a player six actions on his turn and this can be expanded up to nine if a player overcomes enough Challenges.
There are six types of Challenge in Back to the Future: Back in Time. For the ‘Influence Love Challenge’, George and Lorraine must be together with the Character, whose player rolls the dice to generate Heart symbols to raise the Love Meter and so cause the potential lovebirds to fall in love. The ‘Move DeLorean Challenge’ is done to move the DeLorean around the board to get it to the Town Square in readiness for the lighting bolt striking the Clock Tower, whilst the ‘Prepare DeLorean Challenge’ has the Characters prepare the DeLorean with the Cable, the Hook, and the Gasoline at Doc Brown’s house before it can be moved to the Town Square. This only needs be done once per DeLorean Part per game, unlike the other Challenges. The ‘Fight Biff Challenge’ is conducted to try and knock Biff. This disables his action and movement, in particular, preventing the rolling of ‘Biff’ symbols on the dice. The ‘Opportunity Challenge’ gives a chance for the player to gain an advantage, a Power Tile, and other rewards, whilst a ‘Trouble Challenge’ is a chance for the player to overcome a ‘Trouble Card’ that is hindering everyone’s progress.
The dice come in four sets of two. The different types have certain symbols on them that need to be rolled for the various Challenges, but they all have ‘Biff’ and ‘Wild Card’ symbols on them too. The ‘Wild Card’ symbols can be used as any symbol to meet any Challenge and a player can reroll as many dice as he wants on an attempt against a Challenge, depending upon the Power Tiles used, of course. However, ‘Biff’ symbols are bad. Once rolled, they cannot be rerolled, and for each one rolled, the Biff figure is moved closer to Lorraine or George and once at the same location, lowers the Love Meter. Each Knockdown Token that Biff has counters a single ‘Biff’ symbol rolled on the dice. A player can roll as many or as few dice as he wants, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Rolling more dice means that there is likelihood of rolling Wildcard symbols, which means getting more of the symbols he wants, but it also means that he might roll more ‘Biff’ symbols. Further, as long as he does not roll ‘Biff’ symbols, a player can roll the dice as often as he wants or needs to.
Once set-up, the play is all about the right pieces to the right places. George and Lorraine together and all the way on the Love Meter, Biff away from them, and the DeLorean, first to Doc Brown’s House to get the items needed for the lightning strike, and then to the Town Square. As the players push all of their characters and pieces into place, the game is annoyingly pulling them apart, splitting up George and Lorraine, getting Biff too close, causing trouble, and so on. And if the game sounds complex, once you actually have it set up and start playing, everything clicks into place, because what you realise is that you are playing out the plot of Back to the Future and quite literally time is against you. This is where the fun of the game comes to the fore along with the tension in the mechanics, so ultimately, the question of the game is, “Can you do as well as director, Robert Zemeckis, and the film’s cast?” And whilst you might not be able to first time, when you do, you will have told your own version of the story.
The fact that Back to the Future: Back in Time hews so close to the film is both a blessing and a curse. It means that the game is familiar to most players and that form the start, they understand what the overall objective is, and from there it is not that difficult to learn how to achieve that objective using the game’s rules. However, it does mean that Back to the Future: Back in Time cannot actually offer all that much in terms of variability and replayability. This is less of an issue for casual boardgame players than it is for the veteran player, but still, play it more than a few times and it begins to feel like you are watching the same film over and over. Lastly, as a co-operative game, it has the potential suffer from the Alpha Player Problem in which one player starts directing everyone else’s action, especially given that this game is aimed at a family audience and an experienced boardgame player may be the one teaching others to play it.
Physically, Back to the Future: Back in Time is very well produced. The standout piece is the DeLorean car which looks really good and there is even a Clock Tower Dice Tower that you can put together and have sat on the board where it can be used to roll dice and to add a little more physicality to the game. The artwork on the cards and in the rulebook is all excellent, capturing the likenesses of the various characters, items, and places an engaging comic book style. What lets the production values done are the figures. They are not particularly detailed and they really just about capture a feel of the likenesses of the characters. Plus, they are a little light. However, done in different colours, it is easy to work out which character is which.
Back to the Future: Back in Time is very good adaption of the classic time travel comedy. Almost too good in fact. Fans of the film will enjoy this game a great deal, but without being daunted by the rules which really do help them tell the story of Back to the Future. Hardened boardgame players will enjoy what is a very well designed, very nice looking, co-operative game (though not much beyond a few plays). Back to the Future: Back in Time is another excellent game from both Prospero Hall and Funko Games.
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