Each month, the Indie Spotlight highlights a new game that exemplifies the creativity, cleverness, and beauty of today’s independent games market.

 

This month’s Indie Spotlight is:

Planet Unknown

 

There is something to be said about the appeal of the familiar. As much as gamers love to espouse at length about how they want more variety in the themes or mechanics of the games they play, it’s hard to overlook the fact that the biggest sellers – many of the most popular games – tend to follow a similar mold. The reasons for this are numerous, nor is stating such an observation an indictment on those choices made by the publishers, designers, or consumers to that end. It’s also admittedly an oversimplified glimpse at the hobby writ large. So, grain of salt here. But while there is there is extensive room in tabletop gaming for esoteric and experimental ideas (and new games come out all the time to that end), it’s hard to overlook the fact that few of the latter make the leap to mainstream appeal on the first try. At the end of the day, if you only have the space and money to afford one game, more people are going to be drawn to a known quantity than an unproven one.

That said, one of the main (if not most important) contributions crowdfunding has made to game publishing over the last decade is the removal of barriers in getting the game you want to see made. That democratization has opened up whole new avenues to find games that are a little less proven while at the same time revealing that the breath and depth of what gamers may find interesting has a lot more potential than conventional commercial-driven wisdom had thought.

The upside is that this contrast has given rise to an entire decade of crowdfunded games that may never have gotten made otherwise, offering a wide spectrum of choices ranging from the avant garde to the well-trodden. Most exist somewhere in between, providing core elements that gamers will easily recognize while also imbuing it with something new to experience all the same. Even if not every game makes the leap to the status of a modern classic, we are all better off with these attempts all the same.

Planet Unknown, the newest release from Adam’s Apple Games, is a great example what successful iteration can look like. For while it is true that there are a lot of polyomino-centric games to choose from out there, and there are a lot of space colonization games to choose from out there, none offers the combination of the two quite the way Planet Unknown does. And definitely none have used a lazy susan delivery model.

Until now.

In this medium-weight tile placement and resource management game for 1-6 players, Earth’s resources have been used up, and humanity has been forced to expand outwards into the cosmos. Each player has found an uninhabited world potentially suitable for human life – with some effort – with the goal of demonstrating yours is the most successful. Over a series of simultaneous turns, players draft an available tile from a central space station console and add it to an adjacent tile on their board. How and where that tile is placed grows increasingly more important, as tiles provide much-needed resource that afford you a variety of benefits, VP, and upgrades the more of them you collect. Progress is not without its challenges, however, as terraforming actions also trigger meteor storms which need to be removed from tiles in order to score them at the end of the game. Once everyone’s turn is finished, the tile station rotates. In the end, whoever can best optimize their planet’s territory blasts off to victory.

With an impressive  mix of tile optimization, engine building, simultaneous gameplay, tile forecasting, and even asymmetric tech trees, the game’s seemingly simple choices belie the depth of decision-making hidden beneath its rocky surface. Although it bears familial similarities, Planet Unknown is not your typical tile game. And the hobby is all the better because of it.

If this seems like your kind of space mission, then grab the next shuttle over and let the terraforming begin!

 

 

Need more information about any of our previous Spotlight selections? Check out the list below or contact us at: info@cardboardrepublic.com!

 

Previous Indie Game Spotlights:

March 2022: The Transcontinental | Review | Q&A | Developer’s Site

February 2022: Townsfolk Tussle | Review | Q&A | Developer’s Site

January 2022: The Ghosts Betwixt | Review | Q&A | Developer’s Site