NewsHistoricalBoardgames22nd Sep 2026

Road to SPIEL 2026: Timespan - From the Stone Age to Space in 90 Minutes

Today marks exactly one month until the doors open on SPIEL Essen 2026, so we're starting a daily countdown with a game attempting something fairly ambitious: squeezing the entire sweep of human civilisation from the Stone Age to spaceflight, into around 90 minutes.

AngusA22nd Sep 2026

Today marks exactle one month until the doors open on SPIEL Essen 2026, so we're starting a daily countdown with a game attempting something fairly ambitious: squeezing the entire sweep of human civilisation from the Stone Age to spaceflight, into around 90 minutes.

Timespan, from Norwegian publisher Alion - by Dr Ø, is designed by Kenneth Minda and Kristian Amundsen Østby, the duo behind Automania and Bad Company. It’s a civilisation building game for 1-5 players, which deliberately dispenses with warfare and instead concentrates on exploration, technological progress, and constructing an incresaingly powerful economic engine.

What is it?

Civilisation games don’t generally have a reputation for brevity. Timespan wants to provide much of the satisfaction of guiding a society through thousands of years of development without requiring you to set aside an entire afternoon,

Each player combines one of six asymmetric civilisations with one of six technology boards, which provides quite a lot of variation before the game even begins. Across the game there are more than 175 historical people, buildings, technologies, and wonders available to become part of your developing civilisation.

And nobody needs to invade Belgium to win. There is no warfare in Timespan. Instead success comes through developing culture and science, exploring the world, and creating an efficient civilisation.

How does it play?

The game itself takes place across five rounds, each divided into exploration and action phases.

During exploration, players draft cards and discovery tiles from the current historical age. Cards representing people, technologies and buildings can then be added to your civilisation’s timelime, with population markers used to activate their abilities.

The timeline is particularly interesting because history doesn’t stand still. As new developments enter your civilisation, older cards can eventually be pushed out of the active timeline and into your civilisations past. Luxury goods can also be used to upgrade cards, while progress along the Culture track brings additional population and Wonders and scientific development opens access to unique technologies. Exploration develops too, progressing from ships to aircraftm and eventually to spaceflight.

Large parts of Timespan are played simultaneously, helping the designers keep a game covering thousands of years compact and to its advertised 90-minute playing time.

Why we’re watching it

Trying to produce a civilisation game that accomodates five players and runs in an hour and a half is enough to get our attention by itself, especially as I’ve always been partial to 4X and civilisation games in general.

The absence of warfare in Timespan is interesting. Rather than treating history as a succession of increasingly efficient ways to hit your neighbours with pointier sticks, Timespan concentrates on discovery, technological development and the rise - and eventual passing - of the ideas and people that define a civilisation.

The game has already attracted considerable pre-Essen interest. with more than 1,000 BoardGameGeek users already having added it to their Wishlists, while BGGTV have also included Timespan among its most notable forthcoming games.

Whether it will deliver the feeling of building an entire civilisation in 90 minutes is something we’ll be particularly interested in discovering once the game has been released at Essen.

The Game at SPIEL Essen 2026

Alion - by Dr Ø have confirmed they will be in Hall 3 as part of PTS (formerly Matagot & Friends). Timespan is currently available through IPA’s Essen early-access programme, with copies available for collection at the show. IPA lists its Essen sales/pickup location as Hall 3, Stand 3F120.

The game is being published in English. SPIEL Essen runs from 22nd-25th October 2026.