El Rey Planeta (The Planet King)

The Planet King is a game for 1 or 2 players in which the player represents King Philip IV (and his Valido in the cooperative two-player version). The player must guide the kingdom and its resources and at the same time try to turn the Spanish Court into the most enlightened place in the world, thanks to the artistic generation of the Golden Age. In addition to the above, the King is a human being, seeking to satisfy his innermost desires and perpetuate the Habsburg dynasty with a male heir. The player's side (or players) is called Spain or the Hispanic monarchy (or simply the monarchy).

The player must manage the prestige of the kingdom (prestige points), the development of the arts (enlightenment points) and the happiness of Philip IV (happiness points). These indicators, added to various in-game events, will serve to measure the success or failure of the player's actions by means of victory points.

The game is guided by a deck of event cards, representing the various events of the time, from crop failures to conflicts with other powers. The more wars the more unstable the kingdom is and the more problems it will face.

For the best governance of the kingdom, the player has a series of notables (characters), divided into three categories: nobles (politicians and military men), geniuses (artists) and ladies (queens or aspiring queens, court ladies or simple concubines).

Each turn represents 3 to 6 years of real time. There is an introductory game scenario, two campaign scenarios of four turns each, and an eight-turn campaign scenario covering the entire reign of Philip IV. The play length of the four-turn scenarios is 2-3 hours each. However, there is always a risk of an Automatic Defeat, either because the Prestige of the monarchy or its level of Enlightenment is equal to or less than 1 point, or because of a Sudden Death of Philip IV if his happiness falls to zero. The economic unit of the game is the ducat, each of which represents one million ducats of that time, currently equivalent to approximately 136 million euros.