TableNight/Games/Cronos
History · Teams · 15–30 minutes
Cronos
Does the printing press come before or after the compass? Each team gets cards that show an event but hide the year, and has to decide where they belong on the timeline. You vote by majority, the timer does not wait, and a wrong card goes back in the deck.
Heads up: the game itself is still in Italian. This page is ready, the table isn't yet.
Open the Cronos room →What Cronos is
Cronos is a chronology card game played in teams. On the board there is a timeline: at the start of the game it holds a single face-up card with its year on show. Each team holds cards that name only the event — the first radio broadcast, the discovery of penicillin, the first powered flight — while the year stays hidden.
The task is easy to explain and extremely hard to carry out: slot your card into the right point of the line, after everything that came before it and before everything that came after. As correct cards stay on the table the line grows and the gaps narrow: the first cards are placed almost at random, the last ones require telling apart two events a handful of years apart.
The interesting part is not knowing the dates. Almost nobody knows what year the typewriter was patented. But everyone — everyone — has a fierce opinion about where it goes, and the joy of the game is talking your own team into it before the timer runs out.
In short: if you want a game that makes people talk instead of sitting quietly answering, this is the one. Cronos is won by arguing, not by studying.
Game details
| Players | 4 to 20, in teams. The sweet spot is between 6 and 12. |
|---|---|
| Length | 15–30 minutes. Bigger teams argue more, so it stretches. |
| Suggested age | 12 and up. Below that the timeline is frustrating: the reference points aren't there yet. |
| What you need | A big screen for the board and at least one phone per team. |
| Deck topics | History, science, technology, culture and sport. |
| Game language | Italian. |
| Sign-up | None. You join with a room code and a name. |
| Price | Free, with no in-game purchases. |
What you need to play
- A screen everyone can see. A laptop plugged into the TV is best, but a tablet in the middle of the table works too. That screen holds the timeline, which has to stay readable from a distance.
- One phone per team. Unlike the quiz, you do not need a device each: the team decides together and one person enters the choice. If you would rather everyone voted from their own phone you can, but it is not required.
- Any connection at all. Only a few lines of text travel back and forth: it works on a slow mobile signal.
- A table to argue across. Not a technical requirement, but the game is worse without one.
Setting up the room
- Open the board Press the button above from the big screen. If it is the first game of the evening, the server may take up to a minute to wake: that is normal, and explained further down.
- Read the room code It appears at the top, clearly visible. That code is all anyone else needs to join.
- Form the teams Two or three teams work better than four. Try to make each one odd-numbered so internal votes cannot tie.
- Each team joins from a phone Same address, type the code, choose a team name. Everyone will see it on the board, so pick something you can say out loud.
- Begin The first card is revealed on the timeline. From there each team plays its turn.
How a turn plays out
1. The card reaches the team
A card appears on the team's phone describing the event. The year is not there: if it were, the game would last two minutes.
2. You argue, quickly
This is where everything happens. Somebody will say "this is definitely after the war", somebody else will swear the opposite, and neither will have a source. The reasoning that works is not recalling the date but wedging the event between two things already on the line: if television is there and the internet is over there, the remote control goes in between.
3. You vote
The team picks a position and confirms. The internal majority wins: if half the team is convinced of one thing and half of another, somebody has to give way. That is why odd-numbered teams work better.
4. The timer runs out anyway
There is a time limit on every turn, and it does not stop for the undecided. If time runs out without a decision, the team loses the chance to place the card well. In practice this is a good thing: it forces people to gamble instead of ruminating, and it keeps games short.
5. The card flips
The board reveals the year. If the position was right, the card stays on the timeline and becomes another reference point for everybody — opponents included. If it was wrong, it goes back to the deck and the team is left with the same number of cards to place.
The detail that shapes strategy: every correct card helps the others too, because it lengthens the shared chronology. Early on you place almost blind; towards the end there are so many reference points that getting it wrong feels like a crime.
How you win
The first team to place all of its cards correctly wins. There are no points to add up and no scoreboard to interpret: either your cards run out or they don't. That makes the endgame very readable — you can tell who is about to win just by looking at the table, and it produces that moment where everyone starts rooting against the leader.
Tips for your first game
- Odd-numbered teams. Three or five people each. With four you deadlock and the timer decides for you.
- Appoint a spokesperson. Not to give orders, but to enter the choice on the phone. If the phone changes hands every card, half your time goes on logistics.
- Think in intervals, not dates. "Before or after this card?" leads to the right answer far more often than "what year did that happen?".
- Distrust the confident. The most certain person at the table is wrong with a statistically suspicious frequency.
- No looking things up. Obvious, but worth saying before you start so nobody feels accused afterwards.
The mistakes that ruin a game
- Teams that are too big. With six people per team, three talk and the rest watch. Three teams of four beat two teams of six.
- A board that is too small. If the timeline is only legible up close, people stand up — and once people stand up the game unravels. It must be readable from where everyone is sitting.
- Playing it "seriously". Cronos is not a general-knowledge test, and treating it as one kills the table. Wrong decisions made fast are worth more than right ones made in five minutes.
- Starting with the custom deck. Your own events are wonderful, but on the first game nobody has grasped the mechanism yet. Add them from the second game onwards.
Customising the deck
Beyond the base events — history, science, technology, culture and sport — you can add cards written by you. This is the variant that transforms the game: the day you all met, the year the first nephew was born, that holiday everybody remembers differently. The fun changes character, because it stops being general knowledge and becomes collective memory, and suddenly the arguments get much louder.
One practical note: mix them. A deck made only of private events runs out quickly and hands an enormous advantage to whoever was there. A few of your cards among the standard ones works far better.
Where a game like this comes from
"Place the card in the right chronological position" is a classic card-game structure, used for decades in many forms, from teaching games to boxed products. Cronos is our implementation of that idea: the code, the interface, the card text and the team voting system with its timer are written by us.
We do not reproduce any publisher's cards, artwork, trademarks or event lists, and we are not connected to any existing boxed game. Dates are historical facts, and facts belong to nobody: the way they are written and presented does, and that part is ours. If you think an event in the deck is inaccurate or badly worded, tell me — cards can be fixed.
Why the first launch is slow
Cronos runs on a server that shuts down when nobody is playing. The first person to open a room in the evening wakes it up, and that can take up to a minute. While you wait, the site shows a screen with a few tips instead of a blank page, and takes you in as soon as the server answers. Anyone joining after you waits nothing. It is the trade-off that keeps everything free: there is a full explanation in the guide on games with nothing to download.
Frequently asked questions
How many people do you actually need?
Between 4 and 20. Below four, team voting loses its point; above twenty the board gets crowded and turns drag. The sweet spot is six to twelve people in two or three teams.
Do you have to be good at history?
No, and being good at it does not guarantee a win. The cards cover five different fields and most positions can be found by comparing with what is already on the table. Common sense helps far more than a degree.
Can two people play?
The game starts at four players because team discussion is half the fun. It works mechanically with two, but it becomes a different game: the part where you talk somebody round is missing entirely.
What if a team keeps getting it wrong?
Wrong cards go back to the deck, so the team makes no progress — but it is never eliminated and can recover at any point. In practice the gap often closes by itself, because the timeline grows for everybody and placing gets easier.
Can we play over a video call?
Yes. One person shares the screen with the timeline, teams agree out loud and vote from a phone. The recommended setup is in the guide to playing remotely.