Greetings Earthlings, prepare your game nights for an invasion in our Alien Frenzy review!

With PAX Aus 2024 on the horizon, I want to talk about a really interesting card game that debuted at PAX Aus 2023 and has finally come to Kickstarter. Sit back, relax and get ready for a probing as we explore Alien Frenzy.

Alien Frenzy Review – What Is It?

Alien Frenzy is the brainchild of local Aussie brothers Jye and Baden Stone and is, as it says on the box, a card game with aliens! It’s a card game with an interesting twist that can be played with 2 to 4 players. When you start off, you and the other players are trying to prepare and build up your resources together, but once the first alien appears, it’s every man for himself. 

Alien Frenzy Review – How to Play

I will start out by saying that it did take a little bit to get going with the game, but once you have the rules down it’s a pretty easy game to play.

You start the game by shuffling the Supply Deck and the Invasion Deck and placing them side by side in the middle of the table with a space between them for a discard pile. There are 3 UFO cards in the supply deck, and you can make the game easier by removing up to 2 of the 3 UFO cards.

Then, as with all good card games, each player is dealt 7 cards from the Supply Deck to give you your starting hand. The player to the left of the Dealer starts and the turns go clockwise from there. The game has 2 phases: the Preparation Phase and the Invasion Phase.

While in Phase 1 – the Preparation Phase, each player plays an Action Card or Character Card from their hand and follows the instructions for Phase 1. These instructions can be to shuffle the deck, look at the top card or draw from ANYWHERE in the deck. At the end of your turn, draw a card from the deck so you have a maximum of 7 cards in hand and pass the turn to the next person. This continues until someone draws a UFO card and so begins the invasion (Phase 2).

When Phase 2 – the Invasion starts, the discarded cards are shuffled back into the supply deck and this is where you can start sabotaging your friends. First off, tough luck to whoever drew the UFO, you’re on the frontline of the invasion and have to take 3 turns in a row against the aliens. During a turn in the Invasion Phase, players can choose to play a card from their hand, which triggers the top card of the Invasion Deck to be flipped over. If the flipped card is a Relax card, good news, you’re safe. For now anyway. However, if it’s an alien, then you need to step up to the plate.

Each alien is coloured red, green or blue and by now you will have noticed you’ve been gathering a few characters matching these colours. If you can successfully match the alien’s colour with a character from your hand, you place both in the discard pile and follow the instructions on the Character Card for phase 2. If you’re unlucky, you may only have a grey character in your hand which can’t match with any alien. If you can’t match the alien’s colour then you choose a character in your hand and discard it with no effect. But you also might be lucky enough to have a gold character in hand as these can match with anything.

A player is eliminated when they have no more character cards in hand, and off to the probing station with you! All’s not lost however, if your last character successfully defeats an alien, you get a survivor bonus and get to draw 2 cards from the Supply Deck which may just keep you in the game long enough to survive. It should also be noted that during the Invasion Phase there’s no maximum hand size, so you can have as many or as few cards as need be, so long as you have a character in hand. The last person standing gets to survive the invasion.

Alien Frenzy Review – Presentation

As with all card games, one of the key things to get right is the presentation of the cards, to make sure they look fun and are easy to read. Thankfully the cards for Alien Frenzy are very simple to read and the art is definitely interesting. The smiles and faces of both the aliens and characters give me some real Uncanny Valley vibes.

That isn’t to say they’re bad, but simply just unique to look at. Also, I need to shout out the flavour text on the Alien and Character cards. Found at the top of the cards under the names, the flavour text doesn’t give insightful retrospectives or some deep lore, they’re just funny little sentences that brought a smile to my face.

I hope you get taken first, Aldrik.

Alien Frenzy Review – Conclusion

Alien Frenzy, is a fun and chaotic card game that everyone can play. While it can be confusing and a little challenging at first, I definitely enjoyed it once I got the hang of it. Right now Alien Frenzy is live on Kickstarter and you can pick up the game by supporting our local Aussie game designers Jye and Baden. I also recommend splurging and picking up the expansion pack as it adds to the fun. The expansion adds some new alien types which really changed the way the game plays.

So, why should you prepare for the invasion?

• Fun and chaotic gameplay
• Supporting Aussie game designers
• Simple to play once you know how

But why might you want to avoid the probing?

• A little difficult to pick up at first

A sample of Alien Frenzy was kindly provided by the creators for the purpose of this review. For even more tabletop goodness, check out more of our tabletop reviews, and join us over on the Qualbert Discord to chat about more cardgames!