Under Falling Skies

Under Falling Skies is a solo game that takes the classic Space Invaders arcade game and turns it into a wood-and-card version: the mothership descends on Earth, sending its fighter pilots down in waves, and your job is to fight off both… But it’s not just a simple point-and-shoot, as we shall see.

Inside the box is a lot of content – there’s the basic game, and the legacy game which we’ll touch on later. In the basic game, your goal is to stop the invaders as we mentioned – or more specifically, to hold them off until you can push your research marker to the top of the research track – achieving that goal wins you the game.

The board is a narrow strip with Earth at the bottom and the mothership (starting) at the top. Along the strip run five columns down which the smaller alien ships will attack, and after each wave of attacks, the mothership moves a little closer…

Preventing the sky from falling is done with dice – you play with three grey dice and two white: in every round they are rolled once and then placed in your base – the bottom of the strip – to activate a room there. Note that when a white die is placed, any un-allotted dice get rerolled, so the order of placement is important. Dice in yellow rooms give you energy, which can be spent in a number of ways: the most critical of which for Earth’s future is the powering of the precious research track, which runs up the side of the board. Green rooms allow you to spend energy this way. Red rooms allow you to hit back at the attacking ships (also important!) and a die can also be spent to excavate: and this, needless to say, is vital too. Your base is only so big at the start of the game, and excavating more rooms gives you more powerful actions, and more options.More options because… we didn’t mention it, but the way your base is constructed means you can only put a single die in each column. Lastly you can play a die as defence: it doesn’t do anything productive, but it does hold up the alien attack ships diving towards you a little – because after all your dice have been placed and activated (you can activate in an order of your choosing) the alien ships will fly towards you by as many spaces as the numbered die in the same column beneath it. So while high numbers are good for you – they’re also good for your enemy!

This is what makes Under Falling Skies a real brain-burner – you’re juggling the twin demands of complete research with hold off the attack, the economy of the energy and how to spend it, the need to expand your base whilst devoting enough time and attention to blowing up the odd invader, as every time they reach Earth you take damage, and too much damage means you lose the game. The steady advance of the looming mothership also means you’re running out of time, as if that reaches a certain point above the Earth it’s another way to lose. And on top of all this, you can’t simply place the dice wherever you like but must follow this oft-punishing one-die-per-column placement rule!

That’s just the introductory game – after a few plays of getting your head around the system you can try different bases, harder research tracks, and mix in robots – blue dice that can be generated via blue rooms that can share a column and will sit in a room of your choosing slowly generating that room’s power until it’s lifespan (losing a pip per round) runs out.

Then you also have Under Falling Skies’ unique selling point – having navigated your way through what’s essentially the games basic training, you can take on the campaign game itself, about which – we’ll tell you nothing, as the campaign is best experienced as a series of reveals across a longer, grander narrative. But we will say that if you enjoyed the basic game, you’ll probably love the campaign, which – unlike some legacy games – can be replayed once completed.