Get into…Pendulum overview
‘Pendulum is a turnless real-time strategy game for 1-5 players. Players must use real times a resource in managing their strategy to best their opponents, using time on different action types and balancing it with time spent planning and analysing. Fast isn’t always better! The winner will be the player who manages and invests their time most effectively, not the player who acts the quickest. ‘
‘Pendulum is played over 4 rounds of real-time activity. After each round a council phase takes place, which is not played in real time. After the council phase of the 4th round, the game ends and a winner is declared based on total victory. ‘
Get into…Pendulum gameplay
In Pendulum, there are three different action spaces on the board. These are made up of purple, green and black. Each of these areas has its own unique action spaces and an accompanying sand timer. The sand timer is used to denote when actions can be taken or not. You can not move workers from action spaces that have a sand timer on them. Once the sand timer has been flipped (when it has run out), a player can flip the sand timer to the opposite row of action spaces thus freeing up that worker again. However, you can take worker actions in a row with a sand timer in fact this is actively encouraged and the whole point of the game.
In Pendulum, you can take as many turns as you like so long as you have enough resources to pay for actions and you have free workers to complete them. There are lots of different actions spaces and accompanying costs and rewards; too many to mention in this review. The game centres around being able to utilise your resources to the best of your ability and ultimately advance your marker the furthest along the victory tracks to become the new Timeless ruler. All this needs to be done whilst trying to think through your strategy under a real time pressure.
Get into…Pendulum overall thoughts
This is very different to other games we have played. The only other real time game that we have played is Rush MD but this feels very different. We would definitely advise playing with the time track board at first. This is so that you can get a feel of how workers take actions and move on the different boards before adding the real time element. You could always play this way but the beauty of the game is in thinking on your feet and trying to come up with the best strategy whilst all the while the game is changing and developing. It is about thinking on your feet and trying to manage mistakes and use them to your best advantage – or at least better than your opponents. This one was daunting to try to get into as it is very different but is definitely worth taking a leap of faith and we found that its a great two player game which has a good play time.
