TIME Stories The Hadal Project - Dive into a Thrilling Underwater Mystery! Adventure Game, Cooperative Strategy Game for Kids & Adults, Ages 12+, 1-4 Players, 90 Min Playtime, Made by Space Cowboys

Excellent gameplay and story with simple puzzles

Finally finish playing this. It takes a total of 5 to 6 hours in order to complete the game. The blue series is better than the white series in terms of gameplay. Instead of rolling dices, you can just pay your crystal and boost the values to achieve whatever you need, so it is less time-consuming since my group usually keeps on failing due to rolling dices. Story-wise was so-so, I feel like the White Series has a more developed story line, but since I have only tried the Hadal Project in Blue series so is not 100% sure on this, maybe things will get better if you also got the Experience Expansion. Overall, I think this is a good game with a reasonable price and gametime.

I have played every T.I.M.E. Stories game from the first release of the core set. It was an impressive, unique board game experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. Later expansions could be hit or miss in spots but were still consistently entertaining. I will do my best to explain without spoilers but be advised some clues may be inadvertently given.That being said, the Hadal Project was a bust for me and we did not even bother finishing the game. It is frustrating with its lack of clarity on major elements of game play, such as one critical turning point mid-way through. There is little consistency or logic to how and why key items necessary to complete the game are discovered. It is sometimes a 50/50 shot as to whether or not a particular card should be interacted with. This is important when you're limited in the number of actions you can do per game. The series has always had this limitation (in the past it was Time Units or "TU") but this new system is less forgiving and unduly hindered by chance ("Destiny" cards).You find yourself constantly caught between either having to race through, disregarding what is superfluous, or investing time resources on major plot points, without any clear indication as to which is which before committing. As just one example, we were running low on "time" resources ("Azrak") with 2 Azrak already on the Mission card because of updates needed to keep going. We had a conversation with someone we thought was a major character. But instead of advancing the plot, the encounter forces us to decide what we want to talk to him about - while spending Azrak to do it. Apparently, we chose the wrong thing to talk about because we didn't get anything useful. We're now stuck between trying to figure out if Space Cowboys has us unnecessarily wasting resources on a rabbit hole - which the series has been prone to throw into the games - or wasting the remainder of our Azrak to have another conversation with 1 final location still left to explore (and thus do another update, lowering our overall score). We opted to continue exploring for additional information only to reach a dead end and update (again) because if we had made the choice to have a different conversation, we would have gotten A MAP. Not something minor like a support item or bonus resource but a fundamental element needed to advance further in the game. In game design, there should be absolutely no ambiguity about an encounter necessary for completing the game.Those who have played this may ask, how did we have 2 updates already at this point in the game? Because of that one major battle before the transition to the next deck. The test required a substantial amount of Azrak to pass for 2 people (perhaps testing or encounter requirements should be scaled?) The damage dealt is relative to whether you get "exactly" the number required or anything above. Simply getting anything above does not deal enough damage to defeat it so we had to work to get precisely the right number. If you "fail" you lose more Azrak as a penalty. Enter the joy of "Destiny" cards. We had a fresh, newly shuffled destiny deck. On our first run, we invested Azrak to get up to the exact number needed. Drew a "-1" card and lost, costing more Azrak. Invested a substantial amount of Azrak to try and use one of our items (we boosted up to "8" to pass a test of "7"), then drew a -2, which not only cost more Azrak but lost one of two uses of this essential item. We were able to get a few hits by the end of it but were left without enough Azrak to defeat it. If we both exhausted all our Azrak - we would have needed to start the ENTIRE GAME OVER. So, we did an emergency update for one player, finished it off, then had to do a standard update before the next phase to replenish me. We went from a "Legendary" scoring run to a mediocre run in one round because of an unnecessary "chance" mechanism that can severely punish you if you have bad luck with the draws.Regretfully, this was, by far, the least entertaining expansion and the series is simply not enjoyable anymore. Issues with the game mechanics that I thought would be ironed out over the years have not been resolved and only gotten worse.

This was my first foray into Time Stories and have to admit I found it kind of forgettable and not all that fun to play. The concept is you have to spend time crystals to do anything and when you run out you have to start all over. The bad thing is the story is tedious and forgettable so replaying it over and over now ant fun. It’s annoying and pulls you out of the mystery you’re trying to figure out. We got to deck two finally and haven’t gotten it back to the table since. And doubt we will. Save your money and choose a different story-driven game. This one is annoying

Wasn't like the rest. Just SUPER BORING!

I didn't like the story as much or the azrak. I like the older style of play better.

Perfect condition!