Max's Pirate Planet Review

Max's Pirate Planet is a board game with strategy and arcade elements developed by Slant Six Games. In this game, players compete against one another in order to collect buried treasure and defeat the notorious Barnacle Bill. While swashbuckling on the high seas may sound like a grand and challenging adventure, Max's Pirate Planet unfortunately under-delivers in variety and challenge, making the game feel like a shallow or incomplete game.

To get started playing Max's Pirate Planet, players select the number of opponents for a given match and select which character they would like to play as. From there, each person will take turns spinning a wheel that allows them to move around the hex-based game world. The goal of the game is to move a character to spots of buried treasure. After collecting four treasure chests, gamers then face off against Barnacle Bill, and the first player to defeat Barnacle Bill is declared the winner.

Along the way, characters in Max's Pirate Planet can meet challenges in the form of duels from other players or monster attacks. These events play out as mini-games that will task players with doing things like tapping lit cannons or navigating a ship away from an enemy whale. If players are successful in completing these challenges, the will gain a treasure chest, and a loss can possibly result in lost treasure.

While the concept of taking turns to steal each other's booty and fight sea monsters sounds like fun, Max's Pirate Planet is just too simple of a game to be truly fun. The handful of mini-games offered are very straightforward and simple while the duels between characters just seem like a toss up for who gets the most opportunities to strike the fastest. While there is some skill involved, the successful completion of any of these challenges does not feel very rewarding, even when it results in receiving a treasure chest. To a certain degree, these mini-games feel like filler for a game that already does not have much to it.

That being said, Max's Pirate Planet is fun to look at and could be some fleeting fun for you and some of your friends. Playing multiplayer involves everyone playing on the same device, so antics could ensue with players trying to sabotage one another, but other than this, Max's Pirate Planet seems to be a skeleton of a game, rather than full of booty.