How to play
Alien Invasion
Fly your ship, shoot the alien waves, and keep every alien off the defence line — together.
At a glance
- Players
- 1–4 at once
- Ages
- 6 and up
- Round
- Minutes — a sit-down game
- In the packs
- Party, Arena, Big Kids
Controls
The stick and button 1 are enough to play. The rest add moves for the older kids.
| What you press | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stick | fly, in every direction |
| Button 1 — the big button | shoot — hold it; mashing gains nothing |
| Button 2 | shield — hold it, on a budget |
| Button 3 | smart bomb |
How a round goes
Twelve waves, with a mothership on every fourth: three, three, boss; three, three, boss; three, three, final. A good four-station table clears it in two and a half to four minutes.
The formation marches and sways, and it drops a step every time it turns. It keeps the same stride and shortens the gap between strides as its ranks thin, so the last three aliens sprint. Raiders dive out of it at you. Squids, crabs and beetles are worth different amounts, and everything is worth more the deeper into a wave it dies.
Your gun fires while you hold button 1, four bolts in flight at most, so the six-year-old who holds it and the ten-year-old who hammers it shoot at the same rate. The shield absorbs anything for a little over a second and takes six to recharge — enough for one bad bomb pattern, never a whole wave. A smart bomb clears every enemy bolt on the screen and vaporises the front rank; you start with two and can hold three, and a dead mothership gives every live pilot one back.
Three lives each. Out of lives you are a ghost: you still fly, but you cannot shoot or collect, and you wait for somebody to bring you a heart. Aliens drop treats — spread shot, rapid fire, a bomb, a heart — and a heart in a live pilot's hands goes to whoever has been a ghost the longest and puts them back in the fight.
Scoring and winning
Co-op with personal scores. Clear wave twelve and Earth is saved; the card names the top scorer, or a tie. You lose if every ship is a ghost, or if any alien in the marching grid reaches the defence line at the bottom — one shared line, and one alien past it ends the round for everyone, whatever lives are left. A raider that dips past and pulls back up does not count. Alone, your score goes to the leaderboard.
Tips
- A heart is worth more to the table than to you: it revives a ghost. Go and get it.
- Two bombs each is deliberate — a button that deleted a wave would be the only button anybody used. Save them for the mothership's patterns.
- The last few aliens are the fastest and the hardest to hit, and worth double when they dive.