How to play
- Goal
- Place historical events as close as possible to their true year.
- How it ends
- Time Reserve ends when your reserve runs out; Ten Events ends after ten answers; Closing Window ends after three misses.
- Record
- Your longest Time Reserve and Closing Window runs and lowest Ten Events error, separately for each collection. Personal records stay on this device.
- Place each historical event as close as possible to its true year. Enter the digits, choose BCE or CE, and lock your answer. There is no year zero.
- Time Reserve starts with 1,000 years. Each year of error spends one year; exact answers cost nothing. Keep playing until the reserve is spent. Skipping or running out of time costs 250 years.
- Ten Events deals exactly ten questions. Your score is the sum of your year distances; lower is better. A skip or timeout adds 4,024 penalty-years.
- Closing Window gives three lives. Stay inside the shown error tolerance; every five successful answers narrows the window and eventually shortens the clock. A miss, skip or timeout costs one life.
- Timed questions begin at ten seconds. Reveals are untimed, and Reading Room removes the timer entirely. Discoveries and their sources collect in your atlas.
Controls
| Digits / number pad | Enter a year |
|---|---|
| BCE / CE · B / C | Choose the era |
| Enter / Lock year | Submit the year before time expires |
| Skip | Apply the shown mode penalty |
| Atlas | Read discovered facts and sources |
| Settings → Return to desk | Change mode or resume an expedition |
| R / ↻ | Start a fresh expedition after confirmation |
Preview collection: independently reviewed questions, with more history being researched. The clock keeps running in menus, when you leave, and across reloads. Personal records and discoveries stay in this browser; a second tab plays without overwriting the first tab’s save. No AI pictures, ads or analytics inside the game.
Watch how to play
About The Chronometer
An archivist’s brass instrument, a slip of history, and a year to place. Spend a reserve of years, measure ten guesses, or survive a tightening window of time and error.
This is a playable development preview. The source-reviewed starter collection is growing toward a much larger archive; it is not the completed thousands-question edition. Every reveal includes a historical fact and its source.
