CHENNAI: The deduction game genre is seeing a spurt in popularity in recent years, with games like Cryptid and Awkward Guests proving to be excellent refinements of a genre whose origins lie in classics like Cluedo. Today, we’re taking a look at The Search For Planet X, a recent release in that same category. The Search for Planet X was successfully kickstarted late last year and is based on solid astronomical grounding — the existence of a ninth planet has been theorised for many years now based on the orbits and movement of other bodies, and it’s up to you to find it.
Along the way, you’ll also submit theories about those other stellar bodies as your knowledge of the sectors of space grows; theories that could score you points if you’re right, but will also give other players more information when they’re revealed. The entire foundation of The Search for Planet X consists certain logical rules. For example, asteroids tend to cluster, meaning that each asteroid you find will be adjacent to at least one other. Gas clouds, on the other hand, must be adjacent to at least one sector of space that’s truly empty, while comets only appear in certain sectors, and so on.
There aren’t many of these rules (and they are printed on each player’s shield), and once you’ve read through them, you’re ready to go. This is an app-driven game that requires the app to play. However, the app takes care of all the bookkeeping and ensures that information can be transmitted in secret as each player takes actions to research and study the visible sections of the night sky in order to figure out where everything goes. Although it might be possible to play this without an app, it wouldn’t be anywhere as good or work as well and I can definitely see why they went this route.
The best deduction games rely on concrete logical underpinnings that hold up to whatever players bombard them with, while also providing enough space for those mental leaps that make this type of game so enthralling. Happily, I can tell you that this is definitely one of those games — everything is just grounded enough to help you as you start out, cautiously exploring and expanding your knowledge, but interlinked enough that any discovery inevitably cascades and leads to multiple others.
This domino effect is one of the reasons you’ll pay such close attention to what your opponents are doing — even the fact that I might be submitting a theory regarding Sector 11, for example, might help you zero in on another sector, even if you don’t know what I know or even if it’s correct. Eureka moments abound in The Search for Planet X, aided and abetted by the excellent theme.
There is a fondness for astronomy and the study of the stars baked into every part of this game; and, while you don’t need theme to go hand-in-hand with gameplay to have an enjoyable game, you do tend to enjoy yourself a bit more when they do. This offers potentially a deeper deductive experience than Cryptid, and is one definitely worth checking out if you’re a fan of that genre.
WHAT’S NEW?
Spiel des Jahres
The Game of the Year awards announced the result last week and the 2020 winner was Pictures — a game where players have to try to get others to guess what their picture is by using various components (strings, blocks, etc) to allude to it. It’s certainly one of the most left-field picks in recent years.
Kennerspiel des Jahres
Meanwhile, the Kennerspiel (Strategy Game of the Year) award went to The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. Although it shares a theme with our reviewed game this week, The Crew doesn’t pay too much attention to that itself but its gameplay has earned rave reviews since release.
Santorini: New York
Santorini is one of the best abstract twoplayer games around, and the confusinglynamed Santorini: New York looks to kick it up a notch. Shifting the action to the Big Apple and adding new rules, thematic trappings and game modes, it looks like one to watch.
Arjun Sukumaran
http://goo.gl/uNBWN3
(Arjun is a gamer, book lover and an all-round renaissance man