Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time - Review

Does Professor Evil get Left on the Table, or out in the cold?

We say:

 

Read on for more...

Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time is a fully cooperative game from Fun Forge Games which released in the latter part of 2017.  It takes roughly 30 - 45 minutes to play. 

In Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time, the Evil Professor has been abusing a time machine in order to steal precious relics and works of art from the past and future.  It is each player's job to infiltrate his lair and retrieve the stolen relics before Doctor Evil locks them away in his uber protected vault, never to be seen again.  The players take on the rolls of various agents, each with their own specialities and decks of special action cards. tasked with sneaking through Doctor Evil's mansion to retrieve what he has stolen. 

The evil doctor has booby trapped his lair with variously colored security switches and constantly sweeps the premise to lock doors and make sure that his security devices are turned on.

Each turn consists of players taking up to 3 actions, with an extra free optional action where the players can use one of that character's special action cards.  Finally,  the professor moves. 

The actions that each character can perform are; move, unlock a door, flip a switch, or retrieve a treasure.  Each of these actions can be repeated over again if the player wants.  The first action is simple, move the character's standee one space in the mansion.  The second is to unlock a door, this is simply done by moving to a door and removing the black door tokens.  The next action is to flip a switch.  You see, Professor Evil has his treasures protected by a dangerous laser grid, or something similar.  Each color represents a type of security system that needs to be turned off by the players in order to allow the players to swoop in and retrieve the various treasures that are scattered about the estate.  The players turn off a switch by turning the corresponding token over to the inactive side.  All switches of a certain type or types must be turned off in order to take the treasure.

The final action is to retrieve a treasure.  Once the combination of turned off switches shown on one of the active treasures is achieved, then the players can go after and try to get the treasure from Professor Evil. 

Now this is where things get interesting.  In the center of the gameboard is a time rondel which tracks how much time you have left to get the treasure.  If the large black pawn catches up to the corresponding colored token on the rondel, then Professor Evil claims the treasure for himself and locks it away.  Therefore, the players are always trying to figure out timed puzzles.  How do we coordinate our actions most efficiently in order to not only turn off the right switches, but to also have someone within striking range of a treasure before time runs out.  The players win if they retrieve 4 treasures before the Professor does.

The final thing that happens in Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time, as happens in many cooperative titles, the game fights back.  Yes, Professor Evil takes his turn after each player takes theirs. 

The active player rolls two white and one black dice.  The dice will divulge what the Professor will do and where he will go.  One die tells which colored door he will pass through.  The second white die tells how many spaces he will move, and the black die tells how much time will pass.  To add insult to injury, each time the professor moves into a room, he will immediately lock all of the doors and turn on all of the switches in those rooms.  Also, you will get so frightened if Professor Evil moves into the same room as your character that your character will jump out the window and have to start their next turn from the outside again, hence slowing down your progress.

Thank goodness for each character's personal special action cards.  Each player my play one of these as an additional free turn to either move farther, turn off additional switches, stop the professor from moving, or a variety of other actions.

Players continue taking actions and then rolling to make the professor move and alter time until either the players or Professor Evil wins the game.

Now, what did we think of Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time?

First of all, this is a grade A production.  The game board is gorgeous.  The artwork is good and the game box includes a nice organizer.  Every piece has a place and seems to be held in place which storing the box vertically.  The character standees are of good quality too.

My gripe is with the game play.  First of all, it is prone to the co-op game problem of quarterbacking where one or more players can dictate to the others what needs to be done, and they follow.  This is no fun.  Professor Evil attempts to overcome this by adding the special action cards which all of the players can look at and discuss, but this just isn't enough. 

Another issue for us was the overall difficulty of the game.  It seems too easy.  We have won the game every time we've played it, and there doesn't seem to be any way to increase the difficulty stated in the rulebook.  Now, whereas Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time is a good game with excellent production value, the game play seemed like a mixture of Clue and many other co-op games out there.  Professor Evil just didn't stand out from the crowded co-op crowd. 

The element of time being spent was cool, as was the puzzly element to the game.  However, it came up a bit shy of being a "Leave it on the Table" game.

Even though this one will probably hit the table again, it just wont stay there, as Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time gets...

"Once On the Table is Enough"!