Back to the Future Comparison - with Tom Vasel 

I wonder if the makers of Back in Time will also come out with a game based on parts 2 and 3 🤔

My follow up after having play both, and liking them both. Despite both being cooperative games involving dice they play differently enough to set them apart from each other. There is more decision making on back in time but rolling biff is rolling biff and there is not much you can do about that, plus you are limited to two dice of each colour even if someone is willing to help you with more dice. In Dice through time decision making comes after rolling the dice but once you make the decision on which actions to take you know what the outcome will be and don't depend on luck to succeed on your action. Finally, I agree that Dice through time is easier, however, there are a couple of ways that you can modify that by tweaking certain things here and there, such as allowing for as many paradox tokens as events there are on a location, or changing the pool of Einstein tokens before the game begins. I think they are both fun games.

Thanks for the video Tom. Always appreciate you playing our games and glad you love it!

Yup i'm gonna call it...ONE of the designers of either game went Back to the Future to find out when the Other designer was releasing their Back to the Future game....just to come back and produce their own version to release at the same time as the others.....the ultimate Time Travelling Troll. The Real Question is WHO has the DeLorean ? PS: cheers for the comparison video Tom. I live in Australia and I wouldn't have known this and may have accidentally imported the one I wasn't keen on. Saved me alot of confusion. PPS: That's gotta be one of me fav ties mate. The jetplanes look awesome. Keepm comin!

I think so many BTTF came out at the same time simply because Retro (especially 80s properties) is hot again (look at Star Wars, Ghostbusters, etc) and this is also the 35 anniversary year for BTTF so the timing was just right for Universal to cash in again by licensing it out to multiple companies at the same time. Although it is strange these 2 are so similar (both co-op in particular) but it is obvious these were designed by teams that love BTTF and their passion shows.

I have purchased and played both these games (at 2 player) and can say they are both a lot of fun. I did like Back in Time better, I think it came across more thematic and also for my play of dice through time with two players (on standard level) there wasn’t as much tension and we weren’t really in a position where we thought we could lose. Look forward to playing both some more times with higher player counts. Great to finally see some really good Back to the Future games on the market.

I was leaning this way anyway just from watching some play-throughs of both games. Back in Time just seemed to have a much stronger theme.

thank you

I think back to the future is such an awesome theme it can definitely support both games in my collection :)

I wonder how they were both able to get the license for BTF. Surely there should be something that would have triggered when you apply for the license to make a board game that you would see that someone else also had the license. Not sure how this stuff works, but I agree that both companies would be annoyed to have to potentially lose their earnings on such a strong theme.

So are there enough Time Traveling Games for a top 10 now?

and don't forget the other new BTTF game that differs from these, the Funkoverse one (1v1 not co-op like these) that releases Monday!

I definitely want to still pick up dice thru time! I’m a BTTF fan and they both scratch that itch. I think both designers killed it! Taking on popular IPs is a scary thing because fans of the IP always have brutally honest opinions and nothing bad has been said about either. Truly commendable :)

Thanks for the comparison. I do have to respectfully disagree with one point, though. At 3:24 you indicate that Back in Time has more ways to mitigate dice rolls, since these are both luck-based dice games. Dice Through Time includes multiple ways to not only mitigate bad rolls, but to guarantee the outcome. 1) You can use a lightning bolt result to reroll dice. 2) You can use Mr. Fusion to convert two matching dice faces to any other one dice face. 3) You can spend any dice result to move one space. 4) You can go into a support mode and ripple dice into the future. 5) You can use Einstein tokens to perform these actions as well. The important distinction to make here is that if you have a dice result you don't like, you can change it, and in most of these cases, you get to choose what you will get by sacrificing dice or tokens. The mitigation doesn't always just involve simply rerolling a negative result and hoping for better. Cheers!

This is really helpfull to me, when push comes to shove though - I'll pick up both as s fan :)

From watching videos on how these 2 games work. I was liking the Back in Time one better. Being a big BTTF fan I would pick up both if they were cheap enough. But I'm afraid I have to draw the line and only get the Back in Time one. The Dice Through Time doesn't wow me enough to get it as well unless the price was right.

I'm a huge BTTF fan (check the nick :P) but I must say neither of these two managed to sway me into buying it. I would give a slight edge to the Back in Time, simply because the art seems more evocative of the source material, but TBH both games feel derivative and firmly in the "wouldn't refuse to play but don't feel the need to own" category.

Tom, I can't seem to find the Funko Back to the future game anywhere, in any store in NJ, and online it always seems to have crazy release dates ( Nov - Dec ) -- at least on Amazon. Any insight you may have on it's release?? I see the dice BTTF at target. ( but I don't ant that one ) - Thanks

Just to provide an alternative viewpoint from Toms, I found Back in Time to be incredibly frustrating and not much fun at all. My nephew, who always asks to play Horrified when he comes over, won't play Back in Time with me anymore because spending your turn rolling Biffs is such a feel-bad mechanic. Tom mentioned that the game is hard, but I found it to be overly punishing, especially for a game based around a family-friendly movie. He's right about the components and theme though. It's a quality product. So if you are a more casual gamer and if setting up a game only to spend the whole time getting crushed by bad dice rolls makes you a bit salty, you may not enjoy this one as much as Tom did.

That is so strange. Was this just a coincidence that 2 Back To The Future games came out at the same time?

So... Buy both, got it hahahaha

I just bought dice through time thinking it was back in time. Disappointed for sure.

I didn't even know there is two version Personally knowing how inner company works, this is far from coincident how both game came out almost exact same time it's common practice, inside baseball crap

Back in Time really nailed what the movie is about, that's almost never the case in adapting a movie into a board game, BUT I feel like it hurts the fun in playing the game. I feel like there is almost no structure in a turn, because of the many different stuff the game throws at you. The Biff mechanic is just annoying to me and one this game really didn't need. It's very much luck based and it disrupts your strategy too much if you ask me. And to hide that fact the game just provides you with too many choices and mechanics. The artwork is fine, the board design is terrible though. The events are a bit weird, some don't feel like they would be part of the Back to the Future lore, like the gang toilet papering Doc's house, that doesn't remind me at all of the movie. I love the idea of the love meter and the use of the photograph to visualize succes, but the numbers on there seem a bit randomly chosen as well as what happens on the event track. Dice Through Time manages to provide nostalgia for all 3 of the movies. The little events you need to resolve are enough effort to remind you of the movies themes, also they are things that actually happened in the movies. Although the mechanics are build entirely upon dice rolling, I feel like this game is way less luck dependent. It's the kind of dice rolling where you roll first before you think up your strategy. Much like Railroad Ink. Yes, you can have a bad roll but it doesn't feel punishing, like say the Biff die, because you can adapt to make it work. The artwork is really not that special, but the use of colors, the minimal amount of text and the way the board is horizontally and vertically devided is brilliantly effective. Especially the latter really shows the possibilities of time traveling, something Back in Time completely stepped over, but to be fair, it wasn't the time traveling itself that made BTTF 1 an awesome movie. So I think Back in Time did a good job in finding the heart of the first movie, but fails in providing an enjoyable gameplay. The effort that went into adding extra lore is respectable, but sometimes misses the mark, trying really hard to let you play out the exact scenario of the first movie, but then letting you do stuff that never happened. For me Dice Through Time wins this for being a more structured, puzzely game. It actually reminded me more of the feeling of watching the second movie in the series (my favorite one) with all the back and forth, paradox solving, time traveling. Yes, it's easier and the artwork repeats itself alot, but the mechanics are actually enjoyable and makes it more replayable.