Review: Planet Unknown

Introduction & Overview

Greetings, planetary colonists. As you know, we have depleted Earth’s resources and must act now to preserve the future of humanity. You have been chosen to develop a Planet Unknown that will ensure mankind’s survival. You will win the game if you are the player who earns the most Medals. To achieve this, efficiently develop your Planet, advance along your resource tracks, collect Pods, remove Meteorites, and outscore your neighboring Planets.

This is the premise of Planet Unknown, designed by Ryan Lambert and Adam Rehberg (co-designers of Swordcrafters and Truck Off: The Food Truck Frenzy). It was first published in 2022 by Adam’s Apple Games, LLC following a successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Illustrations were provided by Yoma (Legacies, Sweet Mess).

It is published in Spanish by Maldito Games (there is language dependence on cards and boards, in addition to the rulebook). It supports 1 to 6 players, with a recommended minimum age of 10, and plays in approximately 60 to 80 minutes. The retail price is €80. For this review, we used a review copy of the Spanish edition provided courtesy of the publisher.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom) measuring 33×33×10.2 cm (a square box similar to Rising Sun or Blood Rage), we find the following components:

• 16 Planet Boards (double-sided) (cardstock)
• 6 Corporation Boards (double-sided) (cardboard)
• Space Station (plastic and cardboard)
• Commander Marker (wood)
• 12 Depot Indicators (2 of each color) (cardboard)
• 144 Polyomino / Terrain Tiles (12 of each type) (cardboard)
• 14 Rovers (plastic)
• 36 Lifepods (plastic)
• 60 Meteorites (plastic)
• 60 Biomass Patches (cardboard)
• 30 Resource Trackers (5 of each color) (plastic)
• 124 Cards (44×67 mm):
  • 36 Civ Cards
  • 28 Objective Cards
  • 60 Event Cards
• Scorepad (paper)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Planet Unknown is a game whose core mechanics are drafting and tile placement (polyominoes), where each player attempts to develop their unexplored planet board as optimally as possible. To do so, each turn the active player rotates a Lazy Susan-style carousel featuring two concentric rings of tile types. When choosing a position, the active player may take the top tile from one of the two depots pointed to by their indicator arrow, while all other players do the same from the sector facing their own indicator. Players simultaneously place their chosen tile onto their planet board, connecting it to at least one previously placed tile, and place any meteorites onto the tile if depicted. Placing these tiles allows players to advance on two of five possible resource tracks that provide various benefits. The game ends when a player cannot place either of the two available tile types from their depot or when both tile stacks in a sector are depleted. Players then proceed to final scoring, earning points for track progression, collected lifepods, removed meteorites, completed rows and columns without meteorites, and neighbor objective cards (where the highest scorer on each shared card earns victory points).

Key Concepts

Let us start with the Planet Board. It depicts an uncolonized planet grid of 12 rows and 12 columns, with lengths ranging from 2 to 12 squares (drawn across the planet’s surface). Each row and column displays a victory point value between 1 and 3, awarded if all squares in that line are fully covered. In addition, each planet features 6 designated spaces for lifepods and ice zones for extracting water. The upper right corner displays meteorite icons indicating the difficulty level for completing that planet. Each board is double-sided, offering both symmetric and asymmetric setups.

Lifepods are placed at the beginning of the game and award victory points at the end if players manage to collect them intact. Players can choose to build over them, but doing so destroys them.

Players fill their planet squares using Terrain Tiles that depict six possible resources: Water, Energy, Biomass, Civ, Tech, and Rover. Each has a representative color and an icon (representing the resource itself) located in one of the squares of the associated terrain type. When placing tiles, they must connect orthogonally to previously placed tiles, with the exception of the very first tile placed.

Some of these tiles feature Meteorite symbols. These are represented by plastic tokens placed onto the corresponding squares, which block that square from counting toward completing rows and columns (treating the square as if it were empty until removed).

To clear both meteorites and lifepods, players use Rovers. These can deploy onto the planet and move across its squares, whether covered by tiles or not. Whenever a Rover enters a square occupied by a meteorite or a lifepod, it collects it.

Tiles are stored in a rotating carousel known as the Space Station. This dispenser features two concentric rings, each containing 6 sectors aligned across both rings, so that each position points to two tile depots. The active player rotates the carousel to determine which pair of tiles they—and everyone else—can choose from.

To indicate the sector each player drafts from, players use triangular Depot Indicators. These are positioned around the outside of the dispenser so that whenever it is rotated, everyone can clearly see the two depots facing them.

Each player also has a Corporation Board. Most of its surface is dedicated to five tracks, each tied to a specific resource type, along which resource trackers advance as players add terrain to their planet. These tracks feature milestone spaces with bonus effects that trigger immediately when reached. In addition, reaching certain spaces awards victory points. The top section holds collected lifepods and meteorites; the right track features four tech upgrades unlocked by advancing on the Tech track; the bottom contains a persistent asymmetric ability as well as the number of available Rovers. In the meteorite collection area, players place their second indicator token so rivals can identify their draft position on the carousel. Meteorite icons also indicate corporation difficulty. Like the planet boards, these are double-sided (standard and asymmetric).

Players can also score victory points through Objective Cards placed between adjacent players, setting up neighborly rivalries where players compete directly against their immediate left and right neighbors for points based on relative standings.

One benefit of track advancement is receiving Biomass Patches (single-square 1×1 tiles), which allow players to plug empty spaces on their planet board.

Finally, we have Civ Cards, obtained by advancing along the Civ track. These are organized into four tier levels. When reaching a card milestone, the player draws the corresponding deck and selects one card. They offer two types of benefits: immediate one-time effects or end-game scoring bonuses.

That is enough to get started.

Setup

1. Place the Space Station in the center of the table.
2. Form a general supply of biomass patches and meteorites.
3. Prepare the Civ card decks by taking a number of cards equal to the player count plus 1 for each tier level, placing them face down to the side.
4. Each player chooses a color and receives:
   • 1 Planet Board (each player decides which side to use).
   • 1 Corporation Board (each player decides which side to use).
   • 5 Resource Trackers (placed on the bottom space of each track on the Corporation Board).
   • As many Rovers as indicated on their Corporation Board.
   • 6 Lifepods placed on the corresponding designated spaces on their Planet Board.
   • 2 Depot Indicators (place one in the top box of the Corporation Board and the other in front of the player pointing toward the Space Station, distributed roughly equidistant around the carousel).
5. Shuffle the Objective cards and place one shared objective between each pair of adjacent players.
6. Randomly choose a starting player and give them the Commander marker.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Planet Unknown plays over an indeterminate number of turns.

Each turn, the active player selects one of the available tile depots on the Space Station by rotating it so their indicator points to the desired pair of tile stacks. All other players must draft a tile from one of the two depots facing their respective indicator.

Players simultaneously place their chosen tile onto their personal planet board, ensuring that at least one square of the tile is orthogonally adjacent to at least one square of a previously placed tile. If the tile displays meteorite symbols, place a meteorite token on each corresponding icon. If a tile is placed over a Rover or a lifepod, that piece is removed from the game (destroyed).

Next, each player advances the trackers corresponding to the two resource types shown on the newly placed tile by one step. If this triggers any bonuses, they are resolved immediately (the player chooses the order in which they advance tracks and trigger effects).

Afterward, the active player passes the Commander marker to the player on their left, beginning a new turn.

The effects triggered by advancing resources include:

• Civ: The player takes the indicated tier deck of Civ cards and chooses one card. If it has an immediate effect, it is revealed and resolved right away. Otherwise, it remains face down until end-game scoring.
• Water: Certain milestone bonuses act as wildcards, allowing the player to advance any other track by one step. However, advancing the Water track itself requires covering at least one ice space on the planet with the water portion of the placed tile.
• Rover: There are two possible effects:
  • Deploy Rover: The player places one of their Rovers onto any square of the newly placed tile. If it lands directly on a meteorite, that meteorite is collected immediately.
  • Move Rover: The player gains a pool of movement points to move their active Rovers. Each point moves a Rover to an orthogonally adjacent square. Entering a space with a lifepod or meteorite collects it, moving it to the player’s Corporation Board.
• Tech: Reaching a tech milestone activates the corresponding technological ability on the Corporation Board.
• Energy: The player may advance any resource track corresponding to a terrain type that is orthogonally adjacent to the newly connected cluster of energy terrain squares.
• Biomass: Reaching a biomass milestone awards a 1×1 biomass patch, placed immediately on any empty square of the planet board.

Game End

The game end is triggered when a player cannot legally place either of the two tiles available in their sector, or when both tile stacks in any single sector run out completely. In the first case, the blocked player chooses one of their available tiles and advances its resource tracks as if placed, while all other players resolve their final turn normally.

Players then proceed to final scoring, tallying:

• Points for each row and column that is completely filled with tiles and free of meteorites.
• The highest victory point value reached on each of the five resource tracks on the Corporation Board.
• Points shown on the Corporation Board for each collected lifepod.
• Points shown on the Corporation Board for collected meteorites.
• Points earned from Civ cards with end-game scoring effects.
• Points earned from neighbor Objective cards, comparing progress against adjacent players.

The player with the most points wins. Ties are broken using the following criteria:

• The player with the fewest uncovered squares on their Planet Board.
• The player who collected the most meteorites.

If still tied, players share the victory.

Variants

2-Player Variant: In addition to sitting on opposite sides of the table, players place 3 shared objective cards between them to compete over directly.

Private Objectives: Alongside shared objectives, each player receives 2 private objective cards, keeping one and discarding the other. These are revealed at game end and evaluated solely on the player’s own planet.

Events: Separate the event cards by color to assemble a 20-card deck (players can customize the mix of colors, as each tier introduces varying levels of difficulty). Shuffle this deck and, at the start of each round, reveal one event card whose rule applies for the entire round. The game ends when the event deck runs out.

Solo Mode: Shuffle the objective deck and draw 4 private objective cards, discarding one. Assemble the event deck according to your desired difficulty. During play, instead of choosing the carousel orientation, rotate the Space Station one slot clockwise every turn, drafting from whichever two depots face your indicator. The goal is to accumulate the highest Medal rank possible.

Personal Opinion

Polyomino placement paired with a drafting mechanism has undeniably become one of the most recurrent mechanical combinations of the late 2010s and early 2020s. After all, solving spatial puzzles with Tetris-like pieces almost always leaves a satisfying taste.

Of course, design space for true innovation within these mechanics is fairly narrow, which often forces publishers to look for other selling points. Something similar happens with Planet Unknown, which we will dissect below—not without first thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that made this tocho-review possible.

We are tasked with colonizing a new world because Earth has reached its limit. We compete against our rivals to prove who is the ultimate terraformer by adapting a hostile planet to human needs.

Mechanically, as noted earlier, we find polyomino tile placement driven by a circular drafting carousel that behaves like a Wheel of Fortune. The active player rotates it to suit their needs, while everyone else must pick one of the two pieces available in the sector facing their indicator (players sit around this rotating contraption).

Each player drafts one of their two available tiles—each depicting two of the six possible resource types—and advances along the corresponding tracks on their corporation board, unleashing various combos and bonuses.

These rewards include tech unlocks (granting unique asymmetric abilities to each player), bonus bumps on other tracks, civ cards (offering one-shot effects or end-game scoring criteria), biomass patches (to fill awkward single-square gaps on your board), and rover movement to retrieve lifepods and meteorites from the planetary surface (the former placed during setup, the latter introduced on newly placed tiles).

The primary objective is to cover as much of your board as possible while clearing any meteorites that land on it, since every completed row and column free of meteorites awards victory points—accounting for a substantial portion of your final score.

Added to this are points earned from track progression, civ cards, and the shared neighbor objectives placed between adjacent players, turning each border into a direct race for victory points. Meteorites and lifepods provide smaller residual points. And honestly, there is not much more to it.

The premise is simple and the gameplay remarkably straightforward. I appreciate that the designers sought player interaction through two specific avenues. The first is the rotating carousel itself, which enables play at different depths. In casual mode, active players can play purely selfishly (usually hunting for tiles that cover the maximum surface area). However, playing competitively allows you to hate-draft subtly: analyzing what tiles you are handing your opponents and selecting orientations that maximize your relative advantage, even if your own tile choice seems slightly suboptimal in raw terms.

Because selection happens simultaneously, downtime is virtually non-existent; once the active player aligns the carousel, each player’s decision is relatively quick (a binary choice between two pieces).

The second avenue is the neighbor objectives, which nudge players to build along specific patterns and prioritize particular resources, directly feeding back into how players want to align the carousel.

Another major strength is the extraordinary variability the box provides, packing a generous number of asymmetric planet and corporation boards, each graded with a difficulty rating to tailor the experience. We are looking at a mid-weight game leaning light that offers plenty of mileage before feeling repetitive, even if the end goal remains the same.

It could have easily landed near the top of my favorite polyomino games were it not for one flaw that pulls it down: the output randomness. This brings to mind direct competitors such as Bärenpark (see its tocho-review here), My City (see its tocho-review here), or more specifically, Cosmic Colonies (see its tocho-review here), which shares a similar theme and Spanish publisher.

Each has its own quirks, but none suffer from randomness that significantly derails a game—unlike Planet Unknown. The carousel is structured so that players can only see the top tile of each stack, with zero visibility into what lies beneath.

This leads to frustrating moments when a player desperately needs a specific tile type (either to advance a critical track or stay competitive on an objective) and none appear in the supply. When a neighbor objective rewards having the most squares of a particular resource and that resource rarely turns up on top of the stacks, it feels needlessly punishing.

Consequently, while the game seems to scale well on paper, smaller player counts suffer from sluggish carousel churn. At 2 players, only two tiles leave the station between turns; if the remaining visible tiles are unappealing, players get trapped in a rut of picking the lesser of two evils while praying for the right tile to surface. Conversely, at higher player counts, you hold the Commander marker far less often, leaving your options almost entirely at the mercy of your opponents’ carousel turns.

This luck factor clashes awkwardly with the strategic engine-building promised by the corporation boards. If few technology tiles emerge, unlocking those high-tier abilities becomes excessively difficult.

One gets the impression that this is another product built outward from a single gimmick (the rotating Lazy Susan) with layers of depth and asymmetry piled on top, without achieving total mechanical harmony. An example is the noticeable balance discrepancy between tracks: Civ and Tech tracks grant tremendous power spikes that feel mandatory, whereas Water and Biomass—while helpful for scoring and patching holes—offer far less tactical impact.

Another symptom of this awkward design is a rulebook quirk stating that players may lift a top tile to check if it fits their grid, thereby revealing the tile underneath. A cutthroat player could easily game this by inspecting options to see which underlying tile gets exposed for opponents. The rulebook even suggests adopting house rules if this becomes an issue. Having a design vulnerability like this is bad enough, but having the rulebook explicitly acknowledge it as a known exploit is worse.

The Rover mechanic, on the other hand, works nicely. It adds a genuine tactical consideration during tile drafting: you want to avoid meteorites, yet sometimes you must draft them to get the right shape or resource, subsequently sending rovers to clean up the mess so you can score completed lines. Even so, unpredictable tile draws can easily choke your rover movement progress, hamstringing that entire strategy.

Because of these balance and luck issues, despite the impressive variety in the box, long-term replayability takes a hit. It is one of those games that proves more flashy than refined, causing table enthusiasm to wane relatively quickly.

Production quality is a double-edged sword. We have a deluxe-tier product with eye-catching finishes, particularly regarding the plastic pieces: the custom meteorites, lifepods, and rovers look great on the table. The cards feature decent core stock and a smooth finish (sleeving is largely unnecessary since decks are rarely shuffled or held in hand). Planet boards, however, are made of flexible cardstock, contrasting sharply with the thick, dual-layered punchboards used for corporations. The rulebook is well organized and clear. The Lazy Susan carousel is the star component; while functional, its tolerances are slightly loose, causing some tiles to stick out. A dedicated lid would have been welcome to prevent pieces from spilling inside a box that already struggles to close flush without lid lift.

Before discussing art, a quick reflection. As you know, I do not factor retail price into evaluating what a design brings to the table. A game is neither better nor worse simply because of what a buyer paid for it (value for money is a separate discussion). The issue facing Planet Unknown is that its standout feature is precisely its lavish overproduction, while its core mechanics run less smoothly than many of its leaner competitors. Premium plastic and rotating centerpieces inevitably drive up the cost, leaving it up to you whether the experience warrants the price tag.

Visually, the game is striking. The cover makes a bold statement—reminiscent of My City in how it showcases oversized polyominoes filled with illustrative detail—followed by distinct planet art and vibrant, colorful terrain tiles. That said, placing the resource symbol in a single square on multi-square tiles can cause slight visual confusion, occasionally misleading players into thinking the entire piece represents that resource (though the manual clarifies that only the marked square counts).

And let’s wrap this up. Planet Unknown is a polyomino drafting game that initially presents a very engaging dynamic, but gets weighed down by output randomness that heavily swings game flow and can cause unwanted frustration. The level of modular variability is undeniably impressive, but not enough to earn an unconditional recommendation. Furthermore, despite its deluxe aesthetic, certain component and design choices lack that final bit of polish expected from a high-end production. For all these reasons, I give it a…