Living Planet

As we started to play I thought, I'm liking this already!

Tremendous production quality throughout (this was the deluxe version). We loved the chunky hexagonal terrain tiles and the other game tiles. Straightforward rules and gameplay so we were quickly under way.

But three things made the game become more dispiriting than fun for me.

One was that the graphics on the hex tiles can be really difficult to discern. The dice images use a funky font showing a number which isn't always clear, which is a minor nuisance - but worse was that it was very easy to miss which of the three cataclysms they relate to.

Consequently one player built three buildings on a tile and protected them from earthquakes, believing the three cataclysm graphics on it to be earthquakes. A little later he played his own die which triggered this tile's cataclysms - and his colour graphic on the tile was pointed out to him to be the tornado. So he had unnecessarily wounded two of his own men and lost control of one of his buildings which was promptly taken by another player...

Another disappointment was caused by a lot of bad luck. On another day probably the luck would even out but that didn't change the impact a run of bad luck had on our enjoyment. This involved multiple explorations to try to find the resource type needed, yet none of the first 9 tiles I drew had it. Then when a tile was eventually drawn with the needed resource, it couldn't be legally added to the existing tiles.

The final thing making the game tiresome was the constant wounding that other players did to your men. This meant you constantly needed to get mushrooms to revive or replace them, which is where many of your two precious actions per turn were spent. I tried to protect mine from earthquakes but needed the red resource which was too expensive for me to buy so I tried exploring for it, which was the start of the perpetual exploration failure...

We played for 4 hours, including setup and going over the rules. We didn't pursue the Take That possibilities but were aware you could play this in a confrontational way if you wanted to, by deliberately causing cataclysms that target opponents.

Juegazo de Exploración de un nuevo planeta, con cataclismos como eventos, mercado fluctuantes de materias primas, y una variedad con los modos de juego, expansiones, y la inclusión de SAGS para hacer aleatorio los setups, impresionante. Ganas de jugar más, me gustó bastante la 1a partida y todas las reglas son muy intuitivas! :D

nice game and lovely mechanism. Events can be a bit chaotic.

An incredible resource management gaming platform! The core game is intricate and thrilling enough, but combined with the included expansions, you have endless permutations for scenarios, which you could also create yourself. Production is top notch and the artwork absolutely beautiful. You sometimes forget yourself just staring at and admiring the components. The game itself is a challenging race for resources and good deals in a hostile environment, with a dash of take that. The immersion is palpable, and you truly feel like the planet is trying to kill you while you are trying to figure out a way to make the best out of your limited resources. This game is for the connoisseurs rather than for those seeking quick, easy, and forgettable experiences.

Super game, solo, coopérative, classical. The SAGS for new scenarios is a wonderful idea. Inscriptions on tokens should be bigger and colored to be visible when a lot of Hexagons are played

Nice and smart, pictures and icons are too small. It is difficult to be sure about cataclysm’s sites.