Author: Jacob Bullard

Project Planet is a social deduction party game armageddon simulator made by “Fifth Harbour Studios”. Grab five of your friends (or autofill with AI if you’re lonely) and work towards saving the planet! Or destroying it. Or saving the planet while making lots of profit! Although the game is a one versus five scenario it feels a lot more like a free for all, which scarily plays to the realism! Will the earth succumb to a new wave of influenza? Will the locust horde of biblical proportions ravage this blue marble? Will hurricanes raze and flood the world of landwalkers? Well that’s up to you and four other bozos. And of course Mother Earth trying her best to put an end to you!

There are six roles available in Project Planet (which I shall not abbreviate for the sake of professionalism). One player is selected as “Earth” and chooses the cantankerous calamity that will cleave the commoners. Meanwhile five other players will play one of the following: World leaders, Industry, Media, the Public, and Scientists. So you WIMPS get to fight against whatever unnatural nightmare is nixing these neanderthals. Help each other gain influence and make decisions that save lives, or trade a couple thousand, million, billion lives for some more influence! The ends justify the means, or so I’ve heard from a mustache twirling oil tycoon. Almost every choice you make in your role will benefit someone and hurt another. Will you be selfless and make the sacrifices required to save the planet, or will you practice some good ol’ fashioned opportunistic pragmatism?

Some roles work better together, and some are natural enemies. World leaders and Scientists tend to team up and support each other, while Industry and Media are usually at each other's throats. Of course this isn’t always the case, and every round can form different enemies and alliances. One might ask “If we all have the same goal, why hurt each other?” well for BRAGGING RIGHTS OF COURSE! If you get to the end of the game and the earth hasn’t killed you all, the person with the most influence wins! You could help science by donating some money to research, but that takes money and influence, and you want more of those, not less! A lil greased palms here, some patted backs there, and a solid dagger in the back of anyone who gets in your way. Now you’ve got a stew brewin!

To throw some more fuel to the fire, when the game starts everyone has two bonus actions available. You can be cooperative, and help out another party who might be struggling so maybe they’ll return the favor. Or you can be corrupt and slice the heels of anyone who dares progress past you! In one session there are four phases that mark the next set of challenges the earth will be facing. At the end of each phase, two people get the title “Responsible” or “Selfish” giving the title holders another cooperation point or another corruption point. This allows for last minute saves or a bit more chaos to this cacophony of carnage. 

As for playing, only one of your friends needs to actually own the game to play! If you have ever played a game like “Jackbox” or even “Kahoot” it works very similarly, wherein any device with a webservice can hop onto their website and play along. You can even play remotely if the host streams the game to your group via Steam, Discord, Zoom, or your preferred service. The game currently has a demo out but the full release is on September 25th! Add it to your wishlist on Steam, and have a happy hellscape!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2224610/Project_Planet__Earth_vs_Humanity/