Back to the Future: Dice Through Time

To set up, place the game board in the center of the play area. Shuffle the event cards and place them face down on the designated 'Event Cards' space, then place the 'Outatime' marker on the 'Start' space of the 'Outatime Tracker'. Separate the item cards by year (1885, 1955, 1985, 2015), shuffle each pile, and place three cards from each year face down onto their corresponding spaces on the board (adjusting the number for difficulty). Shuffle the double-sided Einstein tokens and paradox tokens into separate face-down supplies. Place a Biff standee on each matching colored 'Biff Start' space as indicated by the icon. Each player takes a playmat, four dice of their chosen color, and a matching Delorean, which they place on the 'Clock Tower' space of the timeline matching their Delorean's color. The oldest player takes the First Player marker.

In 'Back to the Future: Dice Through Time', players work cooperatively to restore the timeline by completing key events from the movies, finding items that Biff stole, and returning them to their correct locations and years. The team wins if all item cards are successfully returned to the box. However, if the 'Outatime' marker reaches the 'Game Over' space on the 'Outatime Tracker' at any point, the players immediately lose the game.

Each round consists of six steps. First, the first player draws a number of event cards based on the player count (3 for 2 players, 5 for 3, 8 for 4). Special events are resolved immediately, while location events are placed on their corresponding board locations. Next, players may reclaim any of their dice currently on the board. Then, all players roll their four dice simultaneously. Players then take turns performing actions using their rolled dice, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise. After all players have taken their turn, the 'Outatime' marker is advanced to the right by a number of spaces equal to the number of locations with events in the timeline that has the most event-covered locations (ties broken by the earliest year). Then, one paradox token is added to each location in that same timeline that has an event but does not already have a paradox token. Finally, the First Player marker is passed to the player on the left, and a new round begins.

There is no individual scoring in 'Back to the Future: Dice Through Time' as it is a cooperative game. All players win or lose together. The primary measure of success is the collective effort to return all stolen items to their correct places in the timeline. The game's difficulty can be adjusted by changing the initial number of item cards per year, making it more or less challenging for the team to achieve victory.

The game concludes in one of two ways. Players achieve a cooperative victory if they successfully return all item cards from their playmats to their correct locations in the timeline, placing them back into the game box. This must be done before the 'Outatime' marker reaches the 'Game Over' space. Conversely, the players immediately lose the game if the 'Outatime' marker ever advances to or past the 'Game Over' space on the 'Outatime Tracker'. This signifies that too many paradoxes have occurred, leading to the collapse of the timeline.