#21 Planet Unknown
Planet Unknown is a space themed tile laying game where players place tiles on a "planet" board in front of them to "terraform" the planet. As you place tiles, symbols on the tiles allow you to move up different tracks gaining points and triggering special actions. (One track lets you move a little land rover around the planet which is a fun little game all by itself.)
Tile selection is done via "lazy Susan" and when it's your turn, you get to rotate the lazy Susan around so that the piece you want is facing you. Other players are then required to take the pieces that are facing them, even if (as sometimes happens) they don't want the pieces available to them.
Planet Unknown belongs to a group of games known as "polyomino" games. These are tiles that are shaped like Tetris pieces and you have to do your best to fit them all together. These kinds of games go over really well with folks who are looking to scratch that jigsaw puzzle itch.
Of course there's more here than just fitting the right pieces together, players are looking to optimize the choices of the pieces that they pick for themselves while mitigating for the pieces they get "stuck" with on other player's turns. You want to both fill up your planet board and move up the various tracks as far as possible. It's cool, thinky, space themed fun, and I love it.
Planet Unknown is a great game. I play it a lot on BGA. I learned to play at the Geekway board game convention in. St. Louis a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteWe love this one, but were late to the party. We'd heard so many great things about the game that we backed the Kickstarter with the Super Moon expansion. At the time, the game was sold out everywhere and we couldn't find it. Then like a week after the Kickstarter funded, suddenly there were copies everywhere, that we couldn't buy because we didn't want to buy the game twice!
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