Interview With Adam Rehberg, Designer of Planet Unknown
I’m a sucker for polyominos. My deep and abiding love for shoving longhouses full of cod, peas and ill-gotten treasures is well documented on our Twitch channel. But one of the best polyomino games I’ve played in recent years is Planet Unknown, AKA the game with the lazy susan.
I recently had the chance to pick the brain of that game’s creator, Adam Rehberg. We spoke about his own game design journey, and the new expansion to Planet Unknown, Supermoon, coming out soon.
Let’s start off by talking a little bit about your history with board games. What games did you play early on in the hobby? Were there any that stood out from the others and really made you want to look more into board games?
I first experienced hobby board gaming as an adult, when my parents taught a game of Carcassonne during a family holiday. This game became a family staple that we'd play at future holiday gatherings over the next couple of years. Most of my gaming influences actually come from outside of the board gaming hobby looking at the video game space. I was definitely a video game kid and many early console and pc titles are still very influential in my gaming interests.
What made you decide one day that you wanted to design a game?
During the same years I was first experiencing hobby board games, I was also getting an entrepreneurial bug. My mind was set on mobile game development. Testing mobile games became much quicker in the physical world versus the digital world and this is really what opened my eyes to the board gaming hobby. This tabletop game testing is really when I started to discover an interest for game design and ultimately what led me to decide to design a board game.
We’re big Planet Unknown fans here at Elevation Games HQ. Supermoon, the upcoming expansion for Planet Unknown, is up now on Gamefound. What was your design philosophy with this new expansion? What does it add that you felt was missing from the original game?
I love this question. There were three main reasons for designing the Supermoon expansion.
Smooth out some minor friction points that were felt by some players. Two of the three unique modules that we created were specifically designed to allow players to play with or without based on their preference.
Add some fresh new content to the game and show that we're excited to support Planet Unknown into the future. This included a new highly modular corporation and planet as well as continuing to push further into design space with Civ and Event cards.
Listen to the community of people that really wanted an opportunity to add a lid to their game.
What’s on your table? What is your favorite game or games to play right now?
We have 2 young kiddos at home since the creation of Planet Unknown so getting physical games to the table has been a challenge lately. I've been somewhat active on BGA to learn the rules of some recent releases and ended up getting much deeper into both War Chest and My City. The reality is that the majority of gaming is still spent creating prototypes, reviewing submissions, or developing games already in our pipeline.
Bonus Question - Where can people go to purchase Planet Unknown or find out more about what you’re working on next?
Bonus question a: Planet Unknown is currently available at Barnes & Noble, and the Gamefound Pledge Manager is still open for the Limited Deluxe Edition + Supermoon Expansion.
Bonus question b: We're excited about two upcoming projects this year in the pipeline. The first upcoming title is called Defenders of the Dictionary, which is a co-op game that reimagines scrabble-like gameplay as a campaign experience. The second upcoming title is called Lóng Soul, which is a competitive azul-like game that brings a fresh take on resource drafting by putting each player as an avatar on the 3d game board. The 3d game board also delivers some of those Planet Unknown intangibles like a quick setup, storage and containment, and it also enables some new gameplay mechanisms that can't be replicated in 2d.
A huge thanks to Adam Rehberg for taking time out of his busy schedule for this interview. You can follow his work at Adam’s Apple Games.
Buy Planet Unknown: https://tinyurl.com/5n9a7jjv (Barnes & Noble)
Pre-order Supermoon: https://tinyurl.com/44zaa2zu (GAmefound)
