Head off to distant planets and adventures with Unsettled from Orange Nebula. Work together to solve the mystery of the planets and get off of them before time runs out.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orangenebula/unsettled-board-game-all-new-content?ref=user_menu

Pros

• Existing Game
• Cooperative
• Variety
• Components
• Aesthetic

Cons

• Variety
• Price Point

The Page

It helps when it’s an existing company and an existing product to make a good page. And Orange Nebula does a very good job of showing off what they have. And it helps with it as well because they have a lot of reviews to put up on the page. I’ll add some in the game section below as well.

Plus, Orange Nebula is very good at their design. The aesthetic of the game is sharp and the artwork is very good. It reminds me a bit, and even in the game, of TIME Stories. The game might have a lot going on with it and components, but the aesthetic is clean.

However, this game has big components to it. And it is a table hog. Not only is it a table hog, it feels like some of the components are big for the sake of being big so it fits into the box. Mainly, there is one board that BoardGameCo talks about where it’s two tracks and that’s in a large tray. Is that the best use of space and money. Could that be combine with something else to make it a better use of everything?

The Game

So this is a survival and exploration space game. But it’s not something like ISS Vanguard where the whole thing is a huge mission. Like I said, this game gives me some TIME Stories vibes. Each box is it’s own separate planet and separate mission that you can go on. But there are three missions per planet which makes it more replayable. And you win or lose and you don’t get the retry in the same way as TIME Stories.

But that means that this game is a framework that teaches you how to explore and do the basics of the game. Each planet is going to have it’s own rules for specific things. And that might be a more challenging part of the game play for some people. While the basics are the same, you’re going to need to spend time to learn how to play a new planet before you play it. They have a challenge level and that’s not how hard it is per se, it’s more the complexity around rule bending, so how much you need to learn to play it.

But back to the game, this is a cooperative survival game. And I think think that’s the biggest thing to know. You’ll be assigning dice to take actions. And you will be exploring the world and the story that is happening. But you can’t just explore, you need to figure out how to survive the planet. And I like that it isn’t as heavy a narrative game. It makes it feel different than other games because of that.

Back Or Brick

For me, this is a Back. I almost backed it the first time that it was on Kickstarter because the theme is one that I like. I feel like that was about the same time that ISS Vanguard was on Gamefound or I knew that was coming up there. So I passed on it, and then it came out and I started seeing reviews about it and I knew I wanted to track it down. Thankfully it came back to Kickstarter so I could get it all now. All nine planets will be coming into my collection.

How about for you is this game a back or brick?

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