Game mechanisms

Tile laying: Seasons are placed and replaced by tile-laying. Within a part, seasons are placed in seasonal order. Between parts, adjacent seasons must match or the earlier season will be replaced by the later.
Circular relations: The players' are all uniquely related to each other. Each color has one color which it will replace and color which it will be replaced by.
Open game board: The outcome of each action can be predicted, creating a highly tactical and "brain-burning" game.
Flexible game board: The game board mats may be turned clockwise and counter-clockwise, significantly altering the game conditions.

Game design

The inspiration to Turn of Time came partly from Iconoclasm, partly from The Game Crafter Time Challenge. The latter was a design contest with time as a mechanism. There are several games that use time as a resource but to me, time is something that you turn back or forth. So what if you take the circular relations of Iconoclasm and add a time mechanism that lets player not only play their colors but also turn time to trigger "seasonal battles"?

With that idea in mind, I took the hexagonal game board of Iconoclasm and split it into smaller parts connected like cogwheels in a clock. Each wheel had two connections to other wheels so each turn of a wheel would affect two other wheels. Add to that a "battle system" where the later season always wins over the earlier season and you have a very clean and simple game using only two types of components: tiles and mats. Could a game really be that simple?

Some initial "proof of concept" testing indicated that the game idea could work. The number of tiles, the number of mats and the number of hexagons in each map were tested first, victory conditions for different number of players tested later and they all pointed towards a solid game. The artwork built on the Iconoclasm artwork with Earth rather than the Moon as background (in Iconoclasm, the world was being created, while in Turn of Time, the world is complete and only the seasons remain) and the symbols were found at Openclipart. The logotype, with the four colors of the season interrelated to each other, was inspired by the Asian Ying and Yang symbol and simply created from commas from the curly font Curlz MT. In almost no time, I had a simple game with simple artwork that hopefully is both gamewise and visually appealing. I will leave to the players and the contest jury to determine.

Game components

6 hexagonal areas; each with 6 hexagons
57 season tokens; 15 Spring, 15 Summer, 15 Fall and 15 Winter

Board Game Version

P&P (PDF, A4)	P&P (PDF, US Letter)

Annotated games

Complete test games are presented under Annotated Games.

Card Game Version

P&P (PDF, A4)	P&P (PDF, US Letter)