So I Tried… Project Planet - Earth vs Humanity

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time, I played Project Planet - Earth vs Humanity.

What I Thought It Was

I was sold on Project Planet as something potentially similar to another party game, King Of The Castle, that I and others at GameGrin occasionally play together. In that game, one person plays as the monarch of a kingdom on the computer while at least three others connect to the game on their phones and play as representatives of the three different regions of that kingdom, all secretly vying for control. Simply put, it offers a fantastic mix of cooperating to keep the kingdom alive and competing to put your region in a strong position to take over. Project Planet, then, would be a game where one player is the planet Earth trying to destroy humanity at any cost and the rest of the players are various groups across humanity, all vying for control and also saving themselves.

In a sense, I suppose I was expecting Project Planet to be mostly the same as King of the Castle, with various entertaining scenes giving each group within humanity a chance to put themselves ahead or cut each other down, and a great deal of voting on how humanity should work together. Something slower-paced with an emphasis on building a story with your friends. Perhaps there would be some major differences here — it is a different game, after all — but close enough to this other amazing title that I’ve enjoyed so much.

What It Actually Is

Confusing and hard to follow, mostly! Project Planet does feature many of the same elements as I expected: you play with a group of friends using your phone browsers, the game does indeed focus on humanity banding together to save themselves, and there is an element where the different facets of humanity are trying to grow in power to become the strongest group on the planet. However, it diverts from what I’d expected in a few key ways. For one thing, the gameplay is very ill-defined. Much of the game seems to depend on specific stats, but this is mostly presented to the players through various bars. There were many cases where I had a hard time understanding how much I was going to impact my stats and those of my competitors and, oftentimes, in what direction. Repeatedly, humanity has to band together to vaguely put their work together to stop a terrible incident. At that point, every player must pour some amount of effort into the mix to reach a given value. However, I never really had any idea how much power I’d be losing by putting in any given amount of power, so I never really saw any reason not to put the recommended amount in. Additionally, the various power stats seemed to shift around at random instead of when a given event was supposed to specifically impact specific groups’ stats. I’d try to explain more about what this experience was like, but it was mostly just frustrating and hard to follow.

Will I Keep Playing?

Oh my dear goodness, no. The only saving grace of my playthrough was that I was still able to have a good time with my friends, but that was despite the game, not because of it. Maybe if I gave Project Planet - Earth vs Humanity another shot, I might come to understand it better and have more fun with it, but I have to be honest: I have no interest in giving the game that second chance. It’s confusing and I have better games to fill that phone-based party game niche.