Planet Unknown is a competitive polyomino tile-laying game for 1-6 players where each player develops their own planet. Players place oddly shaped tiles from a rotating tray in simultaneous turns, terraforming their planet, managing resources, and advancing on various tracks to create the most suitable environment.
The Verdict
based on 42 reviews
The reviewer enthusiastically praises Planet Unknown, highlighting its unique asymmetric gameplay, intuitive rules, and gorgeous production. They consider it a perfect game, despite a minor hypothetical concern about balance that hasn't impacted their enjoyment.
The reviewer considers Planet Unknown a brilliant, genius, and perfect game, highlighting its intuitive rules, functional design, simultaneous tile-placement gameplay via a Lazy Susan, and high replayability through asymmetrical player boards and corporations. He states it will be the first game on his 'Board Game Dad Essentials' list.
The reviewer highly praises Planet Unknown, describing it as a "must-have" polyomino game that is quick, calming, and easy to teach, placing it within their top 20 games of all time.
“Planet Unknown has won the German-language Deutscher Spiele Preis award at Essen Spiel 2023. The competitive tile-placement board game beat out some stiff competition at the world’s largest tabletop trade show to take home one of the most prestigious awards in the hobby.”
The reviewer considers Planet Unknown an amazing and fantastic game, praising its significant strategic depth achieved through simple mechanisms, especially highlighting the engaging asymmetric boards and the innovative Lazy Susan component.
The reviewer enthusiastically recommends Planet Unknown, highlighting its quick setup, satisfying simultaneous gameplay enabled by the innovative Lazy Susan mechanism, and its position as one of the best polyomino games he has played.
The reviewers enthusiastically recommend Planet Unknown, praising its enjoyable gameplay, high replayability through diverse asymmetric boards and corporations, and the engaging simultaneous play that accommodates up to six players smoothly. They highlight the unique 'Lazy Susan' component and appreciate the game's accessibility despite its strategic depth.
The reviewers from Nerds of the West highly praise Planet Unknown, calling it an 'awesome' game they would play at any opportunity. They highlight its accessibility, depth, simultaneous gameplay, and high replayability, noting that the game maintains its pace with more players and offers varied experiences through different planets and corporations.
The reviewer enthusiastically recommends Planet Unknown, highlighting it as a fast, addictive, and highly replayable tile-drafting game that is poised to be a top contender. They particularly praise the innovative Lazy Susan tile dispenser, although they note minor issues with some plastic components and the game's challenging storage due to its box size.
“Planet unknown is just clever. This is amplified by just how simply it has been designed.”
Tom Vasel enthusiastically praises Planet Unknown, highlighting it as a fantastic and fun polyomino game that stands out in its genre, and states it is one of his favorite polyomino games he has ever played, expressing a strong desire to play it repeatedly.
“It’s an all-round wonderful game that I will always enjoy playing. I suggest you don your spacesuit and go out to find your own Planet Unknown.”
The reviewer highly enjoys Planet Unknown, praising its simple yet direct polyomino placement gameplay, which is greatly enhanced by the game's inherent variety through variable planets and corporations, making it highly replayable and accessible.
“By mastering resource management, action card strategies, planet exploration tactics, player interaction, and long-term planning, you’ll be able to navigate the cosmos with skill and finesse.”
The reviewer highly praises 'Planet Unknown' as an amazing game, highlighting its significant depth despite simple mechanisms, particularly loving the asymmetrical player boards and abilities which elevate the gameplay.
The reviewers praise Planet Unknown as a very accessible and engaging tile-drafting game that offers adjustable complexity to keep various levels of gamers interested, highlighting its clever design elements like the 'lazy Susan' tile dispenser.
The reviewers highly regard "Planet Unknown" for its effective implementation of asymmetric player powers, including it among their favorite board games that feature this design element.
Grant Lyon expresses a strong affection for Planet Unknown, praising its variety through different player match-ups and planet goals. He particularly enjoys the satisfying engine-building aspects and progression along resource tracks, highlighting the clever polyomino tile drafting and playing mechanics.
“I’m giving it our GeekDad Approved seal because it’s a great combination of puzzly gameplay and cleverly designed components, plus I like that it goes up to 6 players without significantly impacting the game length.”
“Planet Unknown is an absolute banger. I ruddy love it! What the game may lack in aesthetics, it certainly makes up for in gameplay.”
The reviewer praises Planet Unknown as a great polyomino game with enjoyable simultaneous action, satisfying progression tracks, and a unique rover mechanism. However, they recommend holding off on purchasing it for now due to concerns about its current price-to-presentation ratio.
The reviewer highly praises Planet Unknown as an awesome, fast, addictive, and deep game that offers significant replayability for both new and experienced players, despite minor drawbacks related to its price and the storage of its components.
The reviewer enthusiastically recommends "Planet Unknown," praising it as a wonderful and very good polyomino game. They highlight its fast setup, simultaneous gameplay, replayability from asymmetric boards, and the innovative Lazy Susan mechanism, considering it among their top polyomino games.
The reviewer demonstrates a clear fondness for "Planet Unknown" by meticulously organizing its deluxe components for efficient gameplay, indicating a highly positive experience with the game.
The reviewer enthusiastically praises Planet Unknown, highlighting its engaging polyomino tile-laying mechanics, beautiful components, and high replayability due to asymmetric boards and numerous combinations. They find it a visually appealing and easy-to-learn game with surprising strategic depth.
“With a player count of six, simultaneous actions, tile drafting, and a light tech tree, Planet Unknown is a really fantastic game to have on your shelf.”
The reviewer highly recommends "Planet Unknown," praising it as a quick, fun, light-to-medium polyomino puzzle game with excellent components and high variability, suitable for those who enjoy a multiplayer solitaire experience. They consider it one of the best games from 2022.
The reviewer highly recommends "Planet Unknown," praising it as a very impressive and relaxing strategy game with phenomenal components, great mechanics offering substantial strategy, and a simple learning curve.
“Once you get into it, though, they soon realize that what they’ve actually let themselves in for is a pretty straightforward and, more importantly, fun planet-building polyomino game.”
The reviewer found 'Planet Unknown' to be a highly enjoyable polyomino game with a fun placement puzzle and satisfying track progression, noting its accessibility for a wide audience due to its ease of teaching and fast gameplay, despite some minor quibbles about component quality and preferred player count.
The reviewer is highly impressed with "Planet Unknown," praising it as a relaxing yet strategic game with phenomenal components, great quality, and high replay value.
The reviewer highly praises Planet Unknown as a functional and fun game, highlighting its unique Lazy Susan tile drafting mechanism and the engaging puzzle of optimizing tile placement with varied player boards.
The reviewer provides a detailed look at the solo mode of Planet Unknown, highlighting how the event deck and various tracks add variability and strategic depth to the gameplay. While no explicit rating is given, the descriptive and instructional nature of the video suggests a positive and engaging experience with the game.
The reviewer finds Planet Unknown to be a straightforward and enjoyable polyomino planet-building game, highlighting that the core appeal lies in the strategic puzzle of utilizing given tiles. The game's unique planet and corporation boards add significant replayability and diverse strategic opportunities.
Rahdo presented a detailed run-through of the Planet Unknown prototype, highlighting its polyomino tile-laying and resource management mechanics, and noting that the solo mode effectively captures the essence of the multiplayer game.
The reviewer praises "Planet Unknown" as a great game, particularly for its solo play experience, while noting some reservations about player scaling at higher player counts and the practice of making gameplay additions Kickstarter exclusive.
“Planet Unknown: Supermoon is a Sci-Fi Tile-Laying Area Control Solo Mode Puzzle game for 1-6 players. It is suitable for ages 10+ and has a medium difficulty.”
“But what makes this game hum is the lazy susan. The player whose turn it is rotates it until the piece they want is in front of them, and then each other player must take a token from what’s in front of them.”
The game likely provides a highly engaging and satisfying polyomino tile-placement experience, praised for its clever mechanics, diverse planet boards, and rewarding resource tracks.
The reviewer found Planet Unknown to be a good game, appreciating its polyomino mechanics and theme, though it didn't quite live up to high expectations from its Kickstarter campaign. They felt it might contain 'too much' in its systems for the price, suggesting a preference for games they would play more frequently given the cost.
The reviewers found the Supermoon expansion to Planet Unknown to be a fun addition with some interesting new elements, such as the laser for satellites, but ultimately felt it wasn't a necessary purchase as it didn't significantly enhance the core gameplay of the base game.
“PU does what a lot of solitaire puzzlers rarely deliver–a light, easygoing experience where you can just enjoy the presence of other people while socketing pieces into a complex array.”
