The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine is a cooperative trick-making card game. You play as a set of astronauts completing missions in a space adventure. Unlike competitive trick-making games like Bridge, Euchre or Hearts, here you work together to ensure specific players get certain cards. To do this you must pay close attention to what's been played as you can't communicate about your hand apart from a one-off special token at the start of the hand.

Play involves picking a mission from the log book, dealing out the 40 cards to the players, discovering who the commander is and then working together to complete the mission. Like other trick-making games, you each play a numbered card in order and the highest card of a matching colour wins the trick. Unlike those games, you need to ensure certain players win certain cards as defined in your current mission.

Once you have picked a mission you assign these requirements to each player at the start of the game so you can work together to ensure they win the card they need. You complete the mission if you manage to work together to meet the criteria for every player.

The twist is that you are not allowed to speak to the other players about your cards. You can, however, use a communication token before each round to indicate if one of your cards is the highest, lowest or only card of that colour you have. In the more complex missions, this becomes essential to complete them successfully.