Back to the Future

 In Back to the Future: Back in Time, you play (minimum 2 players) as Marty, Doc, Jennifer, and/or Einstein the dog as they try to help Marty's parents fall in love with each other and get the DeLorean to the right place on Main Street by 10: 04 to go back to 1985. The task is complicated by Biff, who constantly tries to get George with Lorraine and prevent them from falling in love.

 Each character has a unique special ability and a set of starting power tiles that give you a starting set of dice. During the course of the game, completing various tasks, you can get additional tiles.

 Moves are divided into 2 phases:

1. Time phase

 Here you simply move the cube one division along the move counter and activate effects from the corresponding icons. Each round you must draw at least one movement card that moves Biff, George and/or Lorraine around town. In some rounds, you will also have to draw a Nuisance card: they are placed on the field and constantly have certain negative effects. In some rounds, you'll also have to check your love level, and if you haven't raised it to a high enough value, the McFly family photo fragment will disappear.

2. Action phase

 Here you use your power tiles and item cards to move around the field and attempt various tasks. When moving, you can take George or Lorraine with you to move them to more suitable locations. Challenges include trying to raise the love level between George and Lorraine when they are together, battling Biff, moving the DeLorean, trying to collect key items needed to go back in time, completing challenges from opportunity cards, and solving problems from trouble cards.

 When attempting a task, you can flip over any number of power tiles available to you, roll the appropriate dice, and get as many success symbols as you like. Any dice without a Biff symbol can then be rerolled in hopes of improving the outcome. The results can then be modified with some power tiles. If there is another player in the same location as you, they can help you by flipping over their power tiles and/or item cards, adding their dice to your pool.

 At the end of the phase, you flip back your power tiles and item cards, but the allies who helped you will have to wait until the end of their next turn.

 Each Biff symbol on the die and on the movement card moves him closer to George or Lorraine. If Biff is in the same location as one of them, and you have to activate Biff's next symbol, then the level of love decreases.

 You win if the DeLorean is in the ready-to-go zone at 10:04 and the love level is in the love zone. Otherwise, you will lose. You also lose if the sixth, last fragment of the McFly family photo disappears.

PROS OF THE GAME

• What impressed me the most about Back to the Future: Back in Time was the excellent transfer of the atmosphere of the film to the table. Biff is just as crazy, all the cards feature objects or famous scenes from the movie, and making George and Lorraine a couple is not easy at all (making the disappearing McFly family photo part of the game mechanics is a great idea). Everything is like the original.
• During the batch, the voltage is maintained. Biff is pretty dangerous to begin with, and is made even more dangerous by the trouble cards. In addition, something new constantly appears on the playing field, and it becomes much more difficult to complete the main tasks. Combined, this creates a complex puzzle that you will solve in each game.
• It's great to be able to help other players on their turn. When allies sacrifice their tiles and cards for you, it causes positive emotions. Probably, the game would have worked perfectly without this mechanic, but it takes cooperation to a new level, which, in my opinion, is always a plus.
• I also really like the opportunity map. They promise very useful rewards to help you win, but at the same time you risk wasting your turn if the task fails.
• It is also pleasing that the game has many ways to level unsuccessful dice rolls. You can reroll them as much as you want (provided you don't discard a Biff symbol), and some power tiles allow you to reroll Biffs and swap symbols for others.
• The game scales well. There are different move counters for different numbers of players, so the level of difficulty and the length of the games do not change. So far I've only played with 2 and 3 players, but it's pretty obvious that 4 players won't change either.
• In my opinion, the illustrations of characters, maps and fields look simply gorgeous. I really like this style of drawing. It is good that the authors did not decide to simply insert frames from the film.
• Great miniature Delorean!

CONS OF THE GAME

• As I said, it's great to have a lot of dice modifiers, but cuborandom can still hurt you a lot at the start, drastically reducing your chances of winning. If at the start your team doesn't roll dice well and you don't manage to get used to new abilities and items, then the whole game you will be playing catch-up. We had this happen only once, but as a result we lost with a bang, which became clear already after the first 5-6 moves. However, this is the only party out of seven that left a negative impression.
• There is no regulated difficulty in the rulebook. The game is quite hardcore in itself, but the lack of an opportunity to increase the difficulty, if we put our hand in it and it becomes very easy to play, is not pleasing.
• Biff and George's miniatures look amazing. Biff resembles a zombie version of Drago from Rocky, and George is just an elderly zombie.

CONCLUSIONS

 I'm a huge fan of the Back to the Future movies, so I was very pleased to see Back to the Future: Back in Time live up to the spirit of the original... and the fan gameplay. It takes coordinated teamwork to win, the games are quite intense, and the game looks impressive on the table. Apart from one unfortunate incident, we really enjoyed all the games.

 If you like dice co-op and/or are interested in a Back to the Future family, then I highly recommend checking out Back to the Future: Back in Time.