Time Trek

How to play Time Trek

Time Trek is a choose-your-own-adventure narrative RPG that drops you into eight defining moments of world history: Ancient Egypt, the Ides of March, the Black Death, Columbus's 1492 voyage, the storming of the Bastille, the Christmas Truce of 1914, D-Day, and the Moon landing. Each chapter is a branching narrative — you make choices, the story changes, and the choices you make in one chapter shape who you are by the end of the run.

There are no quests to grind. There are no enemies to defeat. The game is text-driven with a tight choice structure: usually three options per beat, one to three beats per chapter. Some choices are obviously historical — should Caesar listen to the soothsayer? — and some are character choices that don't appear in any history book. The branching is real: there are nine distinct paths through the Caesar chapter alone.

Tips

• Read before you choose. Time Trek is short by design. The whole experience is the writing; rushing past it defeats the point.
• Replay. The same chapter played twice with different choices is a different story. Most players replay the Ides of March and D-Day chapters at least three times each.
• Choices echo. Your health, gold, knowledge, and fame carry across all eight chapters, so an early sacrifice can pay off eras later.
• The history is real. Where the game presents historical facts (dates, names, events), they're sourced. Where it presents counterfactuals (what if Caesar had listened?), it's clearly labeled.

Difficulty & play time

Difficulty: easy mechanically, thoughtful narratively. Estimated time: 5–10 minutes per chapter; a full 8-chapter run is about an hour. Suggested age: 11+. The content is age-appropriate but the themes (war, plague, political violence) are handled seriously.

The real history inside the chapters

The Egypt chapter leans on the 2010 medical study of Tutankhamun's mummy: a clubbed foot, a broken leg, and malaria, so you can ease the boy king's pain but never save him. Ay and Horemheb, flanking his throne, both became pharaoh, Ay first. The Rubicon chapter follows Caesar's actual legion, Legio XIII, in January 49 BC, and the finale replays the real 1202 alarms and the 25 seconds of fuel Apollo 11 had left at touchdown.

Strategy: mind your health bar

You start with 10 health; the run ends the instant it hits zero. The game's two biggest hits, joining the flagellants in 1348 and charging the first wave at Omaha, cost 5 health each; never take both on thin reserves. The 1492 merchant route pays a best-in-game 14 gold; the Moon landing pays the top fame reward of 8.

Frequently asked questions

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History Heroes — meet the historical figures from Time Trek in auto-battler form. Counterfactual — same alt-history sensibility, daily format. Empire Tycoon — the civilizations these stories take place in.