Hell has risen.
A couple of years ago in 2018 I was asked by the people at Petersen Games to work on this mammoth co-op game. They’d already progressed quite a way with their in-house designer at the time, but the design wasn’t getting positive reactions from their Kickstarter backers, so I did a considerable amount of work on redoing some components and bringing the whole thing together visually. It was an interesting challenge. I remember that at one stage I had all the designs printed out and on the floor, and as I stood over it trying to make it all work, the burgundy/dark green colour scheme came to me. I liked it because it was an unusual, even slightly unsettling colour combo that you didn’t see very often in games. From there everything fell into place.
You don’t see games like the ones Petersen Games makes very often either. After the very successful Cthulhu Wars, Planet Apocalypse continues their tradition of huge boards and huge miniatures (more like demonic bath toys than miniatures really), but it’s not just a gimmick. There’s a challenging, interesting co-op tower defense combat game here, with endless permutations of characters, abilities and demons to keep things interesting. And it’s all wrapped up in stunning, often disturbing art from conceptual artist Keith Thompson, who brings a weird bestiary of Heironymous Boschian nightmares to life.
If you’ve got the expansion sets, you’ll have enough play combos to last you forever. But hell, even if you want more, I believe that Planet Apocalypse 2 is on the way! They work hard creating nightmares over there at Petersen Games …
