Pyramid Review
U.S. Patent No. 1
Published by Cheapass Games
Designed by James Ernest and Falko Goettsch
Boxed game; $7.00
Like a couple of their more recent releases, Cheapass Games' U.S. Patent No. 1 is slightly less, well, cheapass than their usual releases. Gone is the simple white envelope, replaced by a sturdy cardboard box of about the same size. The card components are of good quality, printed in a single color, and as usual, you have to provide many of the basic items of play -- in this case, a token and counter for each player, three six-sided dice, and enough poker chips, counters, or play money to simulate about $20 per player.
But Cheapass isn't selling cool components and flashy art -- they're selling solid game design. And U.S. Patent No. 1 is another example. Each player has invented time travel in their own time (a concept that quickly become meaningless once time travel is at your disposal), and races to be the first in line when the U.S. Patent Office opens for business on July 30, 1790 -- thus getting the coveted U.S. Patent No. 1 and cornering the market.
There are nine time periods, from 1790 up to 2168, that can be your home base. You travel up and down the timeline from there, trying to assemble a complete time machine and have it at the patent office when your number is called. At the same time, you're trying to stop everybody else from doing the same thing. That's where the weapons come in.
Each time machine has four components, and you must have them all -- . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 28, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.