Under Falling Skies is a solo dice placement game with the objective of reaching the top of the research track before alien ships swarm and destroy your city.

Game Overview

The game board includes your base in a city, sky tiles and a descending mothership and is divided into five columns. You place dice in rooms located in your base in order to take actions, with only one of your five dice allowed in each column. The value of each die corresponds to the power of the action you can take, but it also determines how many steps the enemy ships descend in that column.

Enemy ships that reach your city will deal damage to it, bringing you closer to defeat. Additionally, the mothership descends one step on the track each round, getting closer to the city. You must finish your research before the mothership gets too close or the city takes too much damage, resulting in a loss.

The basic game provides you with four rooms/actions to choose from: power production, research, shooting down alien ships, and excavation which unlocks more rooms in your base. Later on, you’ll come across two additional types of rooms: robot and command. Robot rooms grant you additional dice that automate an action. Unlike regular dice, robot dice stay in place and don’t need to be rolled. However, their value diminishes with every use. Command rooms don’t have an action associated with them but instead boost the value of your dice in other rooms.

Review

Under Falling Skies is a game with tons of tough choices to make. You must carefully weigh your options when placing your dice. Possible actions, positioning enemy ships to be shot down, and managing your power create an interesting decision space. The mothership’s movements also have negative effects, so you need to plan for those too.

Interestingly, luck doesn’t play a major role in this game due to the dice mechanics. You have three gray and two white dice, and when a white die is placed, all remaining, unplaced dice must be re-rolled. This mitigation technique is excellent for providing additional options when dice values are not ideal.

In Under Falling Skies, you must balance your actions carefully. Simply positioning alien ships to shoot them down won’t cut it, nor can you focus exclusively on research and ignore the descending ships. Success requires planning and sometimes settling for weaker actions with lower-value dice to prevent the alien ships from descending too far or to position them for a better shot.

Under Falling Skies has exceptional replayability value! While playing through the campaign, you experience only half of the scenarios, cities, and characters leaving the rest for at least one more unique playthrough. The game features 17 cities, 13 scenarios, and 12 characters, each with a unique rule that changes the game in a different way. After finishing the campaign, you can play a vanilla game with any component from the campaign, offering more options for experiencing the game differently, including more ways of adjusting the difficulty. With excellent component quality and an affordable cost, Under Falling Skies is a great value for your money.

Final Thoughts

With its high replayability, engaging gameplay, and affordable cost, Under Falling Skies is a must-have for solo gamers. But don’t let the “solo” part fool you – there is nothing stopping you from playing with others and making decisions together. I had a blast playing this game, and it earned its permanent place on my shelf.

What are your thoughts? Have you played this game?

Disclosure: We received a review copy of this game. Also, there may be an affiliate link in the links included at the end of this article.