Every card player knows how to follow suit. This game forbids it.
In Tricky Time Crisis, a trick-taking card game for 3 to 6 players published by Musoka Studio, you must never follow the colour already played: once a colour is on the table, it is locked for everyone after you. Designed by Jon Barron, the game plays in 15 to 25 minutes from age 10 and costs €14.99.
Trick-taking is the oldest idea in the card-game book. One card each, the strongest takes the pile, on to the next trick. It takes two minutes to teach, which is why it has survived for centuries and why there are hundreds of versions of it on shelves today. It is also why, after you have played a few of them, your hand starts playing itself: follow the colour, dump the low cards, keep the big one for the end.
Tricky Time Crisis takes that reflex away. The rule is one line long and it rewires everything: you must not follow. When the first player lays a blue card, blue is dead for the rest of that trick. The second player opens a second door and shuts it behind them. By the time the table comes round to the last player, they may have exactly one legal colour left in hand, and it may not be the one they wanted to spend.
This article is not a review, it is a walkthrough: what happens at the table, in what order, and which habits you need to drop on the first hand. Musoka Studio, an independent publisher based in Paris, releases the game on 6 November 2026, so there is time to learn it before the box arrives.
How does a turn work in Tricky Time Crisis?
Four things happen, in this order. The second one is the one nobody sees coming.
1. The lead player opens with any card
No constraint, no trump to respect, no colour to announce. The player who leads simply picks a card and puts it down. That freedom is short-lived, and it is worth using well: the colour you open with is the colour you take off the table for everybody else.
2. Everyone else must change colour
This is the whole game. Each following player has to play a colour that is not yet in the trick. Blue is down, so blue is out. Then yellow goes down, and yellow is out too. The pool of legal plays shrinks with every card, and the last player in the order is the one who gets squeezed. Sitting late in a trick is not the comfortable position it is in a classic trick-taker, it is the tight one.
3. Watch for the paradox
The cards are heroes, and the deck contains several versions of the same hero. If two versions of the same hero land in the same trick, the timeline cannot hold it: a paradox fires and the round ends early, right there. Nobody gets the turns they had planned for. If you were holding a strong card for the last trick of the round, there may simply be no last trick.
4. The trick goes to the strongest total, and the next one begins
The cards on the table are compared and the pile goes to the strongest total. Then the next trick opens, with the same single prohibition. Alongside the heroes, the box holds villain cards and special power cards that bend the situation, and the printed rulebook walks through the scoring in detail. There are 105 cards in all: 1 Leader, 65 Hero, 27 Villain and 12 Special Power.
🦸 Tricky Time Crisis: the game in one page
Tricky Time Crisis is a trick-taking card game for 3 to 6 players, published by Musoka Studio, the Paris-based publisher, designed by Jon Barron and illustrated by Sai Beppu. A game lasts 15 to 25 minutes and plays from age 10.
The setting carries the mechanic rather than decorating it. Dr. Tricky-Time is pulling the timeline apart and a squad of gloriously odd heroes is all that stands in the way: Kid Cuckoo, Doc Tock, Daylight Saver, Double Take and Double Time. The duplicates in that list are not an accident of naming. They are the paradox waiting to happen.
What it feels like in play: the first hand is clumsy, because everyone tries to follow suit out of pure muscle memory and has to take the card back. From the second hand on, the thinking flips. You stop asking what wins this trick and start asking what you leave the next player. Closing a colour early is an attack. Keeping two versions of the same hero in hand is a loaded gun pointed at your own round.
- Players: 3 to 6
- Duration: 15 to 25 minutes
- Age: from 10
- Contents: 105 cards (1 Leader, 65 Hero, 27 Villain, 12 Special Power), 2 rulebooks (EN/FR)
- Box: 13 x 13 x 3 cm
- Designer: Jon Barron · Illustration: Sai Beppu
- Price: €14.99, available on 6 November 2026 (preorder open)
See Tricky Time Crisis in the shop · Read the rulebook (PDF, EN) · Tricky Time Crisis on BoardGameGeek
⏱️ What does Call of Heroes change?
Call of Heroes is the expansion for Tricky Time Crisis, published by Musoka Studio, designed by Jon Barron and illustrated by Sai Beppu. It adds 32 cards for the same 3 to 6 players, 15 to 25 minutes and age 10, and the base game is required to play it.
It does not add more of the same. It brings two recruits, and each one rewrites one of the two rules you have just learned.
Mister Minute turns the trick upside down: with his power in play, it is the lowest total that takes the pile. Every instinct you built in the base game about holding strength now works against you. Version plays with the timeline itself: as long as a villain is on the table, duplicate heroes stop triggering a paradox. Rounds run their full length again, and the card you were saving for the end is worth saving.
The two are modular. Play with one, with both, or with neither, and the same box gives you a different evening in a few seconds. That is the practical reason to put it in the basket at the same time: at €6.99 it is the cheapest way to make the base game feel new again, and its 32 cards slide straight into the base box.
- Players: 3 to 6, like the base game
- Duration: 15 to 25 minutes · Age: from 10
- Contents: 32 cards (15 Version, 15 Mister Minute, 2 rules cards EN/FR)
- Price: €6.99, available on 6 November 2026 (preorder open). Base game required.
See Call of Heroes in the shop · Call of Heroes on BoardGameGeek
How do Musoka's trick-taking games compare?
Tricky Time Crisis is one of five trick-taking games we publish, plus the Call of Heroes expansion. They sit at very different places on the scale, from a twenty-minute party game to a cooperative campaign. Prices below are our shop prices on 1 November 2026.
| Game | Players | Duration | Age | Price | What sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brokies | 2-6 | 10-20 min | from 8 | €12.99 | Halloween party trick-taker |
| Candy Spiders Leopards | 2-5 | 30-45 min | from 10 | €14.99 | Tricks, programming and set collection |
| Trick Stakes | 3-4 | 30 min | from 10 | €19.99 | Tricks, betting and a horse race |
| Tricky Time Crisis | 3-6 | 15-25 min | from 10 | €14.99 | You must not follow suit |
| Call of Heroes (expansion) | 3-6 | 15-25 min | from 10 | €6.99 | Two heroes, base game required |
| Yami | 2-4 | 15 min per mission | from 10 | €29.99 | Cooperative campaign with polyominoes |
The full range sits in our trick-taking games collection.
Three habits to unlearn on the first hand
Stop saving your best card. In a classic trick-taker, the big card waits for the right moment. Here a paradox can end the round before that moment exists. Spend strength while there is a round to spend it in.
Stop thinking about the trick you are in. Think about the one you are creating for the player on your left. Playing a colour is as much about what you remove from the table as about what you win.
Count duplicates, not just colours. Knowing which heroes have already appeared tells you whether a paradox is one card away. That is the information that separates a lucky hand from a played one.
Teaching it to a table: lay out one trick face up before you start, play three cards yourself, and say the rule out loud as you place them. Thirty seconds of demonstration saves five minutes of people asking whether they can play blue.
Frequently asked questions
What makes Tricky Time Crisis an original trick-taking game?
You must never follow suit: once a colour has been played in a trick, nobody else can play it. And when two versions of the same hero land in the same trick, a paradox ends the round early. Both rules work against the reflexes a regular trick-taking player has built.
Is Tricky Time Crisis a good small box trick-taking card game to give as a gift?
It is a 13 x 13 x 3 cm box at €14.99 with rulebooks in English and in French, so it fits a stocking and does not need a language check. For a larger gift, add the Call of Heroes expansion at €6.99, or look at our trick-taking games collection and our Christmas gift guide.
How many players do you need, and does it work at three?
Tricky Time Crisis plays with 3 to 6 players. Three is the minimum and it is a different game from six: with fewer players, fewer colours leave the table in each trick, so you keep more choice and the squeeze is gentler. At six, the last players in the order are the ones under pressure.
Do I need Call of Heroes to enjoy the base game?
No. Call of Heroes is an expansion and the base game is required to play it, not the other way round. It is the natural second purchase rather than a first one.
When is Tricky Time Crisis available, and in which languages?
It is available on 6 November 2026 and open to preorder now. The box contains 105 cards and two rulebooks, one in English and one in French.
In short
If you want one trick-taking game that does not feel like the last one you played, this is the one to take: Tricky Time Crisis at €14.99, 3 to 6 players, 15 to 25 minutes, from age 10, released on 6 November 2026. Add Call of Heroes at €6.99 once the base rules are second nature, which takes about two games. If you would rather have tricks with a longer arc, Yami turns them into a cooperative campaign, and Trick Stakes adds betting and a horse race.
Rules — every Musoka game has its full rulebook online on our rules page, and the Tricky Time Crisis rulebook is available as a PDF in English.
Updated on 01/11/2026. Prices, release dates and contents taken from our shop on that date.