Unsettled® Board Game

Unsettled® Board Game

Unsettled® is a series of collaborative survival puzzles set in the wondrous and bizarrefringes of uncharted space. After being violently torn through a wormhole, your crew of distraught-but-determined scientists must pull together to achieve your shared goal of continued existence amid distressing alien environments that can erode your endurance to a no-longer-alive degree. Space is hard. Try not to die.

BUY NOW

2-4 players

PLAYERS

Cooperative

PLAY STYLE

15-30 min / player

PLAY TIME

3.23 / 5

BGG WEIGHT

Explore a new environment every time

Figure it out, or die

Each time you play, you’ll pair the Unsettled base framework with one of the many wildly unique planet boxes—2 of which are included in the framework itself. The framework contains all the core gameplay components, the planets contain the actual gameplay content. Each planet presents a unique environment, distinct twists the game’s core mechanisms, encounters and items specific to that world, and strange new abilities only possible within that planet’s specific brand of bizarreness. Planets are playable in any order, and a continuous stream of them means there are always new wonders to explore, each offering wildly varying experiences all within the same general ruleset.

“Unsettled takes the harder road. The higher road. Problems are solved through cleverness, evasion, invention. In Unsettled, Neidlinger and Mattson pen a love letter to the optimist’s vision of space exploration and first contact, and in the process celebrate virtues of curiosity and nonviolence. It’s a darling dream. I’m overjoyed to have spent time in its company.”

dan thurot, space-biff

an infinite sandbox

Endless wondrously weird deaths await

The framework and planet format means that each planet functions as its own standalone variant of the game. This creates a wide-open design sandbox that allows us to constantly try new ideas and explore ever weirder and bolder directions since new content does is not beholden to anything that has come before. As designers, this means we get to have an ongoing, deepening relationship with how the game moves and speaks, rather than the more standard experience of being done with a game once it is published. As players, it means you get to discover wildly different ideas each time you crack a new planet box. Together, we will continuously explore strange new ways the game’s mechanisms and structure can be bent and bizarre’d.

Adapt on-the-fly as your group trust and personality traits change

Focus—your primary action resource—is tracked by your awareness, wonder, and energy cubes, which you use to activate actions. Action spaces reveal themselves in the planetary content, but your standard ones are found on your dashboard, along with your personality trait, which personalizes some of your standard actions, flipping and moving depending the crew's current trust level, meaning your personality manifests differently as the social dynamic shifts.

truly collaborative survival

Creative combinations of abilities is your only chance at more chances

The design philosophy of Unsettled is centered around facilitating collaboration between players. The abilities and items you discover on each planet can be used as free actions, at any time, on anyone’s turn, and all can interrupt other game effects; resulting in a dynamic of constant creative combos, involving all players, regardless of whose turn it is. Many Unsettled games end in a moment where hope feels lost, until you put your heads together and have that excited gasping, high-five inducing realization that you can combine all your abilities in just (!) the right (!) way (!) to pull off a miracle.

Design intention

If you're going to die, die hilariously, and take your friends with you

Not only are your abilities often designed to be used on others, most are designed to be used on someone else’s turn. Your comprehension stats assist those around you; meaning your teammates can often use abilities they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, so long as you’re with them and they can lean on your knowledge. Your victories and failures come down to one thing—what you manage to achieve together.

“Checks off so many of the boxes I look for…you’re always going to win (or lose) on a knife’s edge.”

mike delisio, the dice tower

DESIGNED WITH AMBITION

Engineered with Intention

AWARD-WINNING PRODUCTION QUALITY

Quick setup and teardown

Custom Component Gametrayz™

Custom Player Avatars

adorable miniatures

gorgeous table aesthetic

Lost in the bizarre cosmic fringes

Explore the Planet Lineup

planet box

Gniir

Seek understanding in afrozen, silent world ofsentient snow andhaunting mysteries.

planet box

Blackout

Restore power to theScarab before a malfunctioning LUNA puts your lightsout for good.

planet box

Koguya

Untangle an ever-changingknot of vines to revealhidden secrets and themeans to go on.

planet box

Kaélyfos

Hunt for clues that could lead you home — while being hunted insidethe drifting, planet-sized headof a monstrous ancient being.

planet box

Strannos

Navigate a swirling mass ofmetallic asteroids and floatinglava — held together by rampant magnetism and polarity fields.

planet box

Yendraal

Delve into a labyrinthian coral construct with flash floods atevery turn, but tread lightlylest you anger the planet itself.

planet box

Zehronn

Cautiously explore a crystalline crypt to commune with ancient beings and access long-forgotten alien memories.

know the unknowable

Embrace the beautifully weird

Unsettled invites you to see the universe as awe-inspiring in its beauty and strangeness. It is interested in the grandeur of the unknown, in physics that don’t behave as expected, and in the stunning majesty of trying to perceive elements of existence beyond our capacities. The greatest threat in this universe is our lack of understanding. It is a fluorescent flower that turns our minds inside out when we touch it. It is only perceiving in three dimensions when the thing that kills you comes from the fifth. Exploring the stars is an act of bold curiosity and a passionate embrace of wonder, and Unsettled posits that the best defense against the dangers of such a journey is more likely to be an open-minded scientist than a laser rifle with a chainsaw attachment.