Stats:
No. of players: 1
Amount of time to play: 20-40 min
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5 min

Under Falling Skies is a solitaire, dice management board game. You must defend your city from invading aliens. It even includes a re-playable campaign.

Under Falling Skies Rules Description:

To begin Under Falling Skies you set up its modular board according to the difficulty you want to play. You win once you reach the top of the research track. If the mothership reaches your city or aliens destroy it first, you lose.

Every round is broken into three phases, the dice phase, rooms phase, and mothership phase. In the dice phase you roll the dice and assign them to rooms. You start the game with three grey dice and two white ones. When you place a white die in a room you must re-roll all the dice that you haven’t placed.

The aliens descend toward your city from five columns. Your base is divided into five columns with many containing rooms. Anytime you place a die the alien ship in that column moves toward your city a number of spaces equal to that die’s value. If they hit your city they do one damage to it. You must place one die in each column.

In the dice phase you remove the dice you placed in the order of your choosing and take actions based on those rooms. Some rooms require you to spend energy to activate them. Rooms are usually only one space but sometimes they span columns to make larger rooms. In order to use a room’s effect you need to have dice in all of its spaces.

At the top of each column in your base is a gun room. These lower the die value placed there by one. The other rooms’ effects let you destroy some alien ships, gain energy, or gain research or create robots. Robots are blue dice that are placed in a room and carry out that action when you want. When used robot dice reduce their value by one. The aliens killed, robot’s starting value and amount of resources gained is based on the placed die’s value.

Your base is six rows deep, but rooms never span rows. Your excavator token starts in your base. Any spaces behind it are excavated and available. Some rows need to be excavated so you may place dice in them. Once per round you may place one die in an unexcavated space. You may only place the die a number of spaces in front of the excavator equal to its value or less. After resolving that die you may move your excavator token to that space for the cost of one energy.

Once all dice are removed from the rooms the mothership phase begins. First the mothership moves one row toward your city. Then you resolve the action that correlates with that row. These actions add more aliens to the board, move your excavator backwards, or subtract your research. Lastly, you place any destroyed aliens in open columns. If the mothership reaches your city, you lose.

There is a re-playable campaign you can go through once you have a few plays of the standard mode.

Quick Review of Under Falling Skies:

Under Falling Skies is a very fun solo, dice roller. You need some luck but can mitigate some of it with re-rolls and clever dice activation order. It is a great game to have during the pandemic when getting together with your group may not be possible.

The components for this game are very nice. The little alien ships look cool and the artwork enforces the cool theme. The rules are easy to read and follow too.

There is a lot of game in this small box. With modular boards, different cities that give you different bonuses, and the campaign, you have hours of fun in a small package. No two games are the same.

I have not started the campaign but am excited to give it a try. I like that it is re-playable and you can add its components to the standard game too. Again all these options ensure unique games.

I am a fan of classic Atari 2600 video games, this feels like a board game version of Space Invaders. It is intense as the mothership slowly descends and alien ships collide with your city.

Players that want to optimize every turn might suffer from analysis paralysis. There are a lot of things factor into your decisions and while sometimes choices are straightforward, other times puzzling out the best outcome can take some thought. Fortunately It is a solitaire board game so spending lots of time on a round doesn’t mean someone else id waiting for their turn.

If you are looking for a fun board game for one, pick up Under Falling Skies. And do it quick before the mothership gets here.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction N/A
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6