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A Space Invaders board game is coming from Flip Ships creator

From cabinet to cardboard.

Space Invaders board game layout
Image credit: Buffalo Games

Experience the arcade classic on the tabletop with a Space Invaders board game, from the designer behind Flip Ships - Kane Klenko.

A dexterity game for one to four players, Space Invaders takes the premise of the video game and adapts it into a tabletop title that has players working together to defend their planet against alien attackers. (Thanks BoardGameGeek.) As in the original game, Space Invaders centres around the threat of descending extraterrestrial spaceships and the need to destroy them before they reach the planet’s surface. Tasked with preventing this incoming invasion, players will need to use their brains and fingers to save the day.

In a similar fashion to Flip Ships, players become pilots who use their vessels to take on the impending alien threat. Players take turns to flip their ships towards the descending enemy forces in order to take them out, before turning their attention to the mothership. As a co-op game, players will need to collaborate their efforts to remove the nearest alien ships in order to prevent them from reaching the bottom of the board.

Space Invaders board game layout 2
Image credit: Buffalo Games

In a Facebook post, Klenko outlined a few key differences between their design for Flip Ships and the Space Invaders board game, including the fact that the “board will make the invader movement easier to track,” and that players will be able to use a little plastic “super cool Joystick Catapult” in order to fire out their shots at the enemy ships. Players can also use the game’s hi-score system in order to attempt to beat their previous attempts and eventually become masters of defending galactic combat.

Besides designing both the Space Invaders board game and Flip Ships, Klenko is otherwise known for cheating the real-time sci-fi themed board game Fuse - which has players working together to defuse a series of bombs before they explode - the co-op pirate title Dead Men Tell No Tales, a game that’s set to be reprinted by Renegade Game Studios later this year, and the fast-paced spin-off game Pandemic: Rapid Response.

The Space Invaders board game is set to be published by Buffalo Games - alongside Taito, the company that owns the rights to the Space Invaders licence - a studio that has previously released the party games Imaginiff and Last Word.

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Prior to this announcement, another Space Invaders tabletop adaptation was successfully funded via a Kickstarter campaign in the summer of 2019. Called Space Invaders - The Board Game, the deckbuilding title sees players laying down cards in order to move their cannons across the planet’s surface to shoot down the enemy spaceships.

Space Invaders will be released in Target stores on July 25th, with a wider release set for August 1st - a retail price is yet to be confirmed.

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Space Invaders

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About the Author
Alex Meehan avatar

Alex Meehan

Senior Staff Writer

After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.

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