Age: 12+
Playtime: 15-45 min
Complexity: 5/10
Aliens are attacking Earth, and you must defend your city while at the same time conducting research vital to the defeat of the otherworldly invaders.
In this solo game, the board is a vertical stretch or arrayed tiles, with the alien mothership at the top and the city you must defend at the bottom. In between? Empty skies—soon to be filled with diving alien ships that’ll damage (and eventually destroy) your city if you don’t blow them to smithereens before they reach the ground. You can only win by moving your research token to the top of its track, so get to it!
Each turn, you roll five dice and place them on the action spaces of your city. Some spaces provide energy (which you’ll need to do almost everything else), some spaces destroy alien ships, some spaces let you advance your research token, and others create robots you can use to temporarily automate some aspects of your city. The higher the number on the die, the more effective the assigned action will be.
Action spaces are presented in layered rows, and on each turn, you can only place one die per column. And while you’re juggling that, keep another thing in mind: each column also has one (or more!) alien ship somewhere in the sky—the number on the die you place in a column determines how many spaces the corresponding alien ship(s) will dive towards your city.
So that 6 you want to use for energy? Sure, it’ll give your batteries a great boost, but it’ll also make that alien ship drop down six spaces. Maybe settle for a 2 instead?
Under Falling Skies is simple, fast and addictive, with a high replayability factor. An assortment of two-sided board tiles provides tons of variability, and a four-part, repeatable campaign will keep you fighting those pesky aliens for a long while.
Most easily forgotten rule: It costs one energy to move the excavator—that’s why there’s a small lightning bolt printed on it.
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