UFOs! Fries from Space

A nourishing board game by Petra Brandenburger for 1-5 players aged 12 and up
Playing time: ca. 20 to 60 minutes
Illustrated by: Axel Scholz

The aliens have attained almost everything they could wish for: galaxy-wide peace, highly developed industries - and a lot of free time on their hands. But what good is all that wealth without proper veneration? And so they wander through space in their quest for love and admiration. A few of these journies brought them to Earth, but the human inhabitants they met recoiled in fright and confusion. The aliens retreated with dashed hopes and injured pride, but then one of their scientists discovered that the way to a humans heart is through his stomach. This proved to be even more true when the food was laced with a generous dose of psychopharmaceuticals ...

As the expedition leader of an alien people, it is your task to built the best burger diners and french fry joints to become the Most Adored Fast Food Manager and conquer the earth.

The players assume the roles of aliens that crave the love of mankind as much as mankind craves a yummy burger. After each player has chosen a colour, city markers are randomly placed on the game board. These markers show the resistance of humans in this city as well as the maximal number of fast food diners within this city. Then, each player selects a starting town where he places two of his UFOs.

If a player has seen an actual UFO, he is the start player. If none (or several) players have, the last one to have visited a fast food restaurant starts. A turn consists of moving the UFOs on the game board to subjugate the human populace by building fry joints in towns and burger diners in cities. For the latter, the resistance of the city has to be overcome by rolling at least as much on a 12-sided die. Adjacent fry joints make this roll easier, since the good reputation of the alien fast food franchise will already have reached the city.

Once a settlement is under the control of the aliens, UFOs of that alien race may zoom across that area at their usual intergalactic speed without fear of alarming the humans. If they should encounter an UFO of another player, however, they have to stop and try to bump it away (remember, these are highly civilized and thus peaceful beings). Both players roll a 6-sided die, add their Bump Bonus (from support from adjacent UFOs and special UFO designs) and compare results.

The losing UFO is bumped across the map as many spaces as the difference of the final results. In contrast to its usual stealthy movement, a bumped UFO tumbles through the sky rather gracelessly, and thus can be seen and recognized as an alien spacecraft by humans. Whenever a bumped UFO is moved over a city space, it leaves an eye witness counter. Eye witnesses increase the resistance of cities against control attempts by that alien people. Luckily, they can be removed with special Sedator UFOs.

The game ends when each city has at least one burger diner or when a player controls 4 or 5 cities (depending on the number of players). Now victory points are counted: each diner scores as many points as the resistance of its city, and each fry joint scores one point. The player with the most victory points is the winner and can call himself Most Adored Fast Food Manager of Earth.

UFOs! Fries from Space is completely language independent apart from the summary sheets, of which english versions are available here.

Components:
60 Dinners
60 Fry Joints
40 UFOs
18 City Markers
60 Eye Witnesses
5 Summary Sheets
2 Six Sided Dice
1 Twelve Sided Die
1 Game Board
1 City Record
1 Rulebook