In search of a myth
‘The Search for Planet X’ was probably our favorite logical deduction game so far, so we have been excited for the new game following in its footsteps: 🔎🐾 The Search for the Lost Species!
As you learn and play the game you can really feel the similarities between them, as the framework is basically the same with a few key adjustments. For this post I’ll assume you don’t know Planet X, so stay tuned for an upcoming comparison post. 😉
The goal of the game is to find the location of a specific species - this will be randomized each game. 🏝️ An island is made up of 16 hexagons, this is where you will be moving your meeple and doing surveys to find clues. The game has some clear sets of logic rules that will allow you to slowly deduce everything.
On the 16 hexes there are:
⬜ 5 Truly Empty hexes, without any animals
🦜 4 Lories next to each other in a diamond shape
🦥 3 Cuscuses within a distance of 2 to each other
🐸 2 Toads that are always next to 2 truly empty hexes
🐍 1 Python that is never adjacent to Cuscuses
🐾 Finally, the Lost Species has a special rule, depending on which cards you used at setup.
You will most often be doing surveys 🕵️, which means moving across a few spaces and asking how many of an animal type there is. Other actions or effects will give you even more logic rules to help rule things out and locate certain animals. You note all of this on your sheet. 📝
Every action has a time cost. 🕓 After an action you will move on the time track accordingly, and the next player to act is always the one furthest back. There is also a neutral Expedition Leader meeple that will move when it’s behind every player, triggering special phases, most notably Reporting and Confirming Sightings - which is when players can put down tokens on the map, saying what animal they think there is. Later these will be confirmed or proven false, giving everyone valuable information.
The best part is that each game will be a new unique puzzle to solve, with some new logic rules! 🙃 This of course comes with a trade-off: you need an app 📱 for every action of the game. On the plus side, the app is extremely well made and intuitive.
