Aces and Ages

Aces and Ages is a history game for a car full of people.

One phone, held by a passenger. They read an event out loud, like "The Great Fire of London starts in a bakery", and everyone else plays by ear, saying where it belongs among the events already on the line. Before the telephone? After the Moon landing? The passenger taps the spot. Get it right and the card joins the line, with its year and a fact to read out. First to place their whole hand wins.

MADE TO BE PLAYED OUT LOUD

• The passenger holds the phone. Nobody else needs to look at it.

• Ask for the card again, have the whole line read back, or hear the score. The passenger taps one button and the phone says it.

• Say "chip three" or "between the telephone and the Moon landing", and the passenger taps that spot.

• Tap the card to pause everything at once. Whenever the road needs the whole car, the game waits.

563 EVENTS, EVERY YEAR CHECKED AGAINST SOURCES

From a toddler crowned pharaoh in 1479 BCE to India's Moon landing in 2023: science and invention, world history, US history, the arts, exploration, the "Disasters, disease & medicine" deck, sports and everyday life. Every year has been checked against independent sources. A few dates follow tradition or conventional dating. The reveal and spoken result say "by tradition" for traditional dates and "by the usual chronology" for conventional dates.

A DECK THAT REMEMBERS

Aces and Ages remembers which cards you have played and gives them a rest when the deck has room. Cards you got wrong come back sooner; cards you got right rest longer. Smaller decks and longer games repeat cards sooner. Every deck shows its event count.

FIVE DECKS, ONE TO FOUR PLAYERS

Everything, Everyday things, Skyward, Since 1975, and Before 1500. The smaller decks cycle faster — Skyward alone is 45 events. Set any seat to Junior and a placement one chip out still counts.

KEPT ON YOUR PHONE

No account, no ads, no tracking, no in-app purchases. Aces and Ages never connects to the internet, so it plays the same with no signal as it does at home. Saved app data includes names, settings and game records. It is kept on this phone. We never receive it. If your phone is backed up to iCloud or a computer, the backup may include it, under your own backup settings.

Please play only when it is safe to talk, and keep the phone with a passenger.