Palm Laboratory builds on its island little brother

 Palm Island was a watershed game for me. It wasn’t the first In Hand game I learned but it really kicked off my interest in the medium. And I still think it is one of the best, between a solid decision tree and intuitive game play.

However, I think that it’s sequel, Palm Laboratory, is better.

Like its younger sibling, Palm Laboratory is an In Hand game, in this case means a deck of cards that stays in your hand the entire game. Handy for when you don’t have a table.

There are functionally three things you can do with a card. You can discard any card, putting it at the back of the deck. Some cards can be turned sideways and put in the back of the deck, becoming resources. And cards can upgraded, spending resources to flip or rotate cards before you, yes, put them in back. Upgraded cards can be better resources or worth points or both.

In Palm Island, your deck is an island village that you are developing. In Palm Laboratory, it is a mad scientist’s lab and you are doing mad experiments. You know, using the same basic mechanics, different flavor.

The big change between the games is the addition of goal cards and a danger meter. In Palm Island, you play for eight rounds, plain and simple. Palm Laboratory makes it a bit more complicated.

At the bottom of the deck, there is a goal card and the danger meter. Each stage of the goal card requires you to pay a certain amount of resources. If you don’t upgrade the goal card, the danger meter goes up. And if it maxes out, it’s game over.

So, instead of eight rounds and trying to beat your own score, Palm Laboratory has variable rounds and a win-lose condition. On top of that, the goal cards don’t give you any points so you have to spend resources that keep you alive but don’t help your score.

There are three different goal cards. The resource goal, which is easy one, that just has you spend regular resources. The research goal and the experiment goal add cards to the deck, creating new types of resources that only count toward the goal card. Which still count towards your four active resource card limit. The research goal makes resource management much tighter while the goal card adds a push your luck element.

Oh, on top of that, you can add a helper card that will give some kind of resource and, for a very limited number of times, keep the danger meter from going up.

Palm Island offered a sleek resource management, engine building experience. Palm Laboratory adds a new layer of decisions and the very real threat of failure. Palm Laboratory adds some legitimate meat to the system without getting fiddly about it. 

Palm Laboratory isn’t just Palm Island with different art. The mechanical changes take it to the next level and I didn’t even know it there was a next level. 

Unfortunately, Palm Laboratory seems to be harder to find than Palm Island. Hopefully that will change because it is worth finding.