Pendulum by Travis P Jones | A Worker Placement, Time-Optimization Strategy Board Game | Time is The Most Precious Resource as You Attempt to Rule Dunya | 1-5 Players, 90 Mins

This is a great game that is totally different than any other game I’ve ever played (not saying it’s the only game like it, I just don’t know if it). I’d recommend adding this to your board game collection is it is a unique experience. I understand that some people feel that it’s chaotic but to me, the chaos doesn’t feel negative. It’s chaotic when you want to go faster than your resources or strategy allows. It’s chaotic when you want to slide your worker in before a timer moves to get more resources. But there are times that you wait for the timers to move so you will have downtime to stop and think about your next few moves. Pendulum has time-based, worker placement, and engine building all in one game and in my opinion, did it very well. I think the game is fantastic and truly recommend everyone who enjoys board games to get it.

An “easy to learn”, “giftable” game without too much “thickness” (don’t know the context). Stonemaier drills into your brain the concept of the timers. If you take those away, it’s a very straight forward worker placement game, with a small amount of tableau building. Take an action, get an item, use those items to take a more powerful action. I can see this getting hectic at the 4 to 5 player games. I’m mainly a solo-2p gamer, and this game flows nicely at 1-2 players. Automa is easy to figure out and perform. There IS a way to play without the timers, but I think that detracts from the intention of the game. The timers add an element of tension and player blocking. Without it, I can see it as a stale worker placement game.

One of the biggest parts of this game is that it is constantly moving. If you look at your phone you will most likely get stuck. It does keep everyone involved and you don't have to wait for someone to take their turn.

I loved this purchase, I am an experienced game player so for me it was easy to learn. I loved the art and would highly recommend.

This is the most interesting board game I've ever played. Truly genius!

I love Stonemaier Games but honestly, if this was any other publisher it would get returned. The product itself is great but game play is kind of boring- at best.

And we weren't able to figure out out. We tried all day. We kinda went through one game using the 22 page instruction book as a guide and at the end we realized we had two decks left in the bottom of the box that were not mentioned either in the play overview, game setup, or drilled down instructions. We returned it but won't get all our money back.

I have to say this is the first miss for us with a Stonemaier game; we are Stonemaier Champions and are always looking forward to the next game from this company. With having played it 5 times now we can assuredly say that is on our shelf of games to be traded. This is not to say that Pendulum is not filled with great things, as always with these games the component quality is of the highest standard from the moment you open the box and start going through the instruction manual. The art on the different player boards is quite nice but I found the rest of the player board very dull and in my opinion at least in some poor color choices for it to be very eye catching. Pendulum is a game of time and how well you manage it. You as a character are campaigning to be the next ruler of a land where the former King kept lands at peace and the clock of time ticking. Now that it has stopped and the King gone, you're vying for the job through real time worker placement on the board. Here is where the Chaos begins everything is timed, when and where you can place your workers, when you can retrieve them, how long rounds last. The game has you flip timers that are 45s, 2m, and 3m in length and then once that happens the board erupts. As players you are trying to gain power, popularity, and prestige and accomplish 1 legendary task in order to be voted in as the new ruler. The different worker placement spots on the board let you spend available resources you have to gain these traits and to build up more resources for future turns. These turns and whether or not the game actually works depend on if you flip the timers when you need to, if everyone knows the rules perfectly, if you know the rules perfectly. Just playing the game under the timers is difficult to say the least, you don't have time to watch what anyone else is doing, timers will run out and not get flipped, or one will be flipped before you're ready. In the middle of all this you wonder if you actually paid for that action you took two turns ago or not and if your worker is or isn't currently in the right spot. Oh well, this doesn't really matter because no one is or can or has the "time" to watch what anyone else is doing. Players sit around the table mumbling the actions they are taking to themselves and hopefully after a 9 minute round, give or take, all of you have accomplished something. There is a huge amount of accountability on everyone at the table knowing this game front to back and understanding all the rules before you can play this. You can't just teach someone the basics and then have them jump in. Other problems I have are that the main board is pretty inaccessible to all the players at the table. At 2 players this is able to be tackled by sitting close, 3 or more and by the time you are set up you can't reach major parts of the board. Herein lies another issue, there is an actual rule that says no one ever has to flip over new cards on the board after they've taken one, this is fine and well for the players sitting next to that area, but for the person who is opposite that side of the board you're out of luck. You can ask someone to do it, but that would require someone sacrificing their time to do that for you. This game didn't work for us, but for those who enjoy fast paced decision making, don't suffer from analysis paralysis, can memorize all the rules, and find the management of real time to be exciting this game would be a welcome addition to your collection. My wife flat out hates this game; she would rate this one negatively if she could. I can, if I squint my eyes really hard, see the light at the end of the tunnel a bit, I'm interested to play this with others who've truly spent several games learning and getting good at this. It is possible with seasoned players that I might enjoy it a bit more myself, which is why I think a 3 is a pretty fair middle of the road assessment of Pendulum. I didn't hate it, I found it pretty exciting as it was unlike anything I've ever played before, but I can't say the feeling at the end even if I won was rewarding or I could say I had fun playing it. There is also a variant where you can ignore the timers and make this a turn based game, which honestly aside from it being a teaching method for it to be suggested this is a possible way to actually play the game is crazy. You are basically removing all of the mechanics of the game that make it the game which was published. I don't know if Pendulum as just rushed or that it didn't get enough play testing ahead of time. I don't think 5 players could even manage to get this to the table and effectively play it together without constantly being in the way of one another's turns. Final verdict, Pendulum just isn't worth your time.

Il prodotto è arrivato integro e nei tempi previsti. Non ci abbiamo ancora giocato per cui non posso dire nulla in merito. Per il resto siamo rimasti piacevolmente stupiti nel trovare all'interno le istruzioni del gioco in italiano nonostante nella descrizione fosse indicata la lingua inglese. Bellissimi i manuali di istruzioni. All'interno della scatola si trovano anche le bustine per conservare le pedine. Bellissime le clessidre.

Good quality

Pendulum es un juego Worker Placement y Engine Builder que se juega a 3 rondas. Con personajes asimétricos y componentes muy bonitos, relativamente pocas acciones y pocos recursos, y con un objetivo de juego que no se basa tanto en puntos, sino en cumplir objetivos y no ser el peor. Hasta ahí podría estar describiendo a muchos otros juegos en el mercado. Entonces entran los relojes de arena y el caos comienza. Los creadores, a través del instructivo, te aseguran que no es una carrera, no se trata de ser el más rápido, sólo saber sacar lo mejor de tu tiempo, y efectivamente así es, sin embargo, esto no quita la prisa y ese sentido de urgencia y de tener una vista panorámica de todos tus trabajadores para no olvidar cometer errores, olvidar acciones, u olvidar recolectar los recursos para pagar dichas acciones. Nos divertimos muchísimo con este juego, siempre nos quedamos picados y con ganas de más, muchos hubieras y mucha estrategia que por el estres del tiempo no logramos hacer en algún determinado juego. Lo recomiendo ampliamente, les puedo decir que estaba muy dudoso por la cuestión de los relojes y la prisa, pero no podía estar más equivocado, lo recomiendo al 100%

No hay AP, en momentos frenético y en otros caótico, grata experiencia y gran adquisición para variar una ludoteca, lo recomiendo al 100

Apenas empezare a jugarlo pero se ve increíble