Dreamland (fan expansion for T.I.M.E Stories)

Better than the official scenarios in a lot of ways. Clever and original puzzles, clever concept and humour. A couple of small things i didn't like, but overall a great example of using the Time stories system to do something much more nuanced than the original designers seem capable of.

Tons of fun, with great puzzles and plot development. Very challenging, would gladly play again and laugh at the choices of another group.

There are a lot of "small puzzles" where reading the cards very carefully is needed to resolve some locations and actions, and also great that this follows the official strategy of "Tiny little flavor text actually was critically important."

The receptacles were all worthy of consideration (none felt useless and all were able to contribute), the location choices and order of operations was not strictly linear due to multiple options and tangled webs. Rather than finding "The Way", you found 3-4 different paths that gave you different equipment/options/characters and had to choose which setup was more important for that run.

Decisions throughout the scenario were meaningful, each impacting the rest of the run. Players are given significantly more TU than "normal", which eased the burden of efficiency over exploration, and this encouraged players to truly experience the entire scenario. We loved that part of it the most, as we do not enjoy feeling like we should "skip" locations or cards simply because "Not enough TU!"

My group playtested Dreamland. I believe we used every single state token at some point in the game. It really made us work hard to figure out the best tokens to have with the best receptacles at the best locations. We loved this part of the game.

There was some timey wimey stuff going on that really hurt my brain, but was lots of fun.

The puzzles were perfect: not too hard, not too easy, and very clever. George also snuck in some hidden references that were just, cool.

I can't speak for the artwork; the version we played was mostly placeholder art since we were testing the story, rules, flow, and puzzles. I can say that the story is solid, the mechanics work well, the rules are clear, and the puzzles are finished. All of the mind-boggling details in Dreamland were very well executed.

!SPOILER ALERT!

The card quality is great. The very basic graphic design is ok for a fanmade scenario. The gameplay is great, definitely on par with the original scenarios. Some nice fresh elements like: heavy spoiler ahead:

Switching between the two families and transfering money between them through the offering, very clever! And the personal characteristics of the characters such as vertigo etc.

Took us about 10 hours to complete (1 day, 2 evenings). Loved what we called the 'mini games'. Art is still has a lot of place holders, but does not take away from the writing. The story was very fun. I liked how they used the mechanics of Time Stories so creatively.