chrononauts
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Off the Grid reviews Chrononauts
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column on gaming away from the television screen or monitor. Looney Labs -- makers of Fluxx and those bizarre Icehouse pieces -- are once again in their element with Chrononauts, a time-traveling card game that is almost too clever to work. Almost.Unlike other games, it's the complexity of Chrononauts that saves it from mediocrity. With a heady central "timeline" mechanic, and a 44-page booklet of rules that reads like an operations manual for the Flux Capacitor, it would be pretty easy for the crunchy game to fold under the weight of its own ambition. Luckily for Looney, time travel was never meant to be easy, and it's too damn fun hopping through history to allow a little bit of complexity to get in the way.
