Parallel Worlds is a game of multiple time dimensions. As a player(s), or Temporal Adjusters, it is your responsibility to guard against the mis-use of dimensional time travel. Unlike many other collectable card games available, Parallel Worlds has a trump based strategy with a very rapid and addictive format. The game can be played with 2, 3 or 4 players, 4 players playing in teams of 2...

The 9thdimension has recently released a new card game in an already full market, so why should you buy it?

Like a lot of these cards/card trading games Parallel Worlds has a complex back-story to justify its individuality over other games. In this case it involves the House of Maylay, who discovers a portal stone whilst investigating "Insertiar Hole Technology" (I kid you not). Not sure who thought that this was anything other than a risible fiction, which will have small boys wetting themselves in the playground.

Having, in their possession the portal stone they then go on a rampage of destruction, with only the Temporal Adjusters, a name which conjures up visions of cosmic tax men, standing in their way. Eventually it all goes horribly wrong when they attempt to contact the Supreme Being only for the experiment to suck them all into a massive black hole.

With their technology gone the universe returns to normal until The House of Stroteus discovers the Portal Stone of Ellipsar in the Sythoron Galaxy and starts time and dimensional travel. A side effect of this is the release of a number of Quantum Control Sets, and with these your quest is to gain the Portal Stone and save the universe.

Well that’s as may be. What you actually get is a game of Spades - Trumps if you like. The starter pack consists of twenty-five cards, which whilst enough to start the game, is about half of what you would expect. Within each pack you get four suits of six cards each. The initial suits contain four more houses, Meihndor, Uraydies, Adrastea and Kreyn. Within each of these houses  you get six ranked cards, ranking from top to bottom is Emperor, Spellmaster, Priestess, Paladin, Archangel and Gatekeeper. The only twist her is that the Gatekeeper is always attached to two houses at the same time. Oh, and of course, you get a portal stone card.

The manual's description of how to set up play is a little over complicated, but basically each person gets five cards. There are some further shenanigans to determine who the attacking party is and which suit are trumps, prior to the commencement of the game. The idea of the game is to win as many point as you can, the first person to reach zero wins, so that’s Spades with a backwards scoring system.

None of that really raises any excitement, a slightly silly and unnecessary back-story and an over complicated set up. That is until you actually see the cards.

Each house has been illustrated by an international fantasy/science fiction artist and to tell the truth they are just stunning to look at. Each suit is represented by an elemental sign, Earth, Fire, Water and Air. These motifs have been taken up by the illustrators with the idea of the elements reflected in the illustrations.

This creates a problem. We played a few rounds and sure, once you get the idea, the game is little different from Trumps, however the cards are so beautiful that I didn’t want anyone to play with them lest they creased them.

So it’s a card game, but it’s a very beautiful card game. One problem I did have with the whole thing is that whilst you get an illustration and title for each card, as well as an element symbol in the corner, what you don’t get are any numerical values on the cards, which makes scoring a headache, as you have to pick the manual up all the time.

So, nice illustrations, shame about the silly story.

7

Charles Packer