Planet is a tile drafting, pattern-building game.

Title: Planet

Year Published: 2018

Designer: Urtis Šulinskas

Publisher: Blue Orange

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~45 mins

Set-up Time: ~2 mins

Ages: 8+

Theme: Environment

Mechanisms: Tile Drafting, Pattern Building, Area Control

How to win: Score the most points by building habitats and attracting animals.

Game Description

The spark of life is about to jump from your hands to spread out in the world. Deploy your mountain ranges and your deserts, spread out your oceans and your glaciers. Handle wisely your continents to form environments suitable for the apparition of animal life and maybe you’ll manage to create the most densely populated planet!

How to Play Planet

Round Up

So this is basically a tile layer with a gimmick. The gimmick works, but it’s still a gimmick. It makes it much more interesting than things like Carcassonne. If it was flat it would still work as a game but it wouldn’t be as interesting.

Part of the fun of the game is the constant spinning and turning of the Planet as you plan out your turns. You’re not doing that with your regular flat game.

Obviously, it looks really cool. The core you’re attaching tiles to is really well-made. The tiles are strong like a thick fridge magnet if that makes sense?

The animal art on the cards is basic and I really wish they had the names of the animals on them. But, the iconography is very clear and the colours are very easy to make out which, to be honest, is the important part.

The game is decent. You need to collect areas of your habitat in order to score end-game points. But you also need to build up regions adjacent or not adjacent to other regions to collect the animals. If you don’t get them someone will and that’s points out of your pocket.

Rating I give it 7/10

Planet First Impressions Essen 2018

Jesta ThaRogue