Have you heard of the card game called Timeline? I hadn’t until recently but it’s definitely going to become a firm game night favourite! Looking through the options you can get for Timeline, there are several different versions. These include; Historical Events, Inventions and the version I got, Music & Cinema. The basic principle of the game is to lay your cards in the right date order – a timeline – and therefore I knew Music & Cinema was really the only one I stood a chance with!

Each card, no matter what version you play, has two sides. One which says only the event, invention, song, movie etc. and the other which has that information plus a date. Since I played the Music and Cinema version, I’ll give my explanation in terms of that!

To begin the game, every player gets given four cards each. These cards must be played so you can’t see the date side. You then start the game by placing a draw pile and turning over one card so that you can see the date. This begins your “Timeline”. Each player then takes it in turns to try and lay one of their cards. At the beginning it’s a lot easier, as you just have to pick before or after the original card. However as more cards get laid and time gaps get smaller, its much more tricky to know whereabouts your card belongs (unless you’re a history buff of course!). If you lay your card correctly, play passes to the next person and you are one card down. If you lay it incorrectly, the card is discarded and you must draw another from the draw pile to replace it.

Despite thinking I would have a chance when it came to cinema and music, I can tell you now that I was no wiser than anyone else sat at that table. As much as it’s great having some knowledge, there is a whole lot of guessing goes on and you may as well be playing the card game “Higher or Lower” as you often feel like shouting “Higher!!” or “Lower!!”. And if you like things complicated, the great news is, you can add more cards to this pack. The other versions of the game all work alongside it as expansions. So ultimately you could be making timelines of cinema and music, inventions, historical events, discoveries etc.

I really enjoyed this game and I have to admit I’ll be leaving it out of the cupboard to play any time someone new comes around. With any luck I might actually start to learn some dates and this will help me both when playing the game and when attempting general knowledge quizzes!

The game is available online at Amazon and on the high street at Waterstones – RRP £12.99