Grave Robbers from Outer Space, abbreviated in the rule sheet as GROS (get it – gross) is a 120 card stand alone game, in which the players are directors creating a trashy late night B-Movie. Can you say CLICHÉ? As short dumb card games go, GROS has totally encapsulated every trope and beat of the sci-fi/horror movie genre, and is at times laugh out loud funny.

The cards are divided up into Characters, Locations, Props, Creatures and Special Effects, all of which have ‘Title words’ at the bottom of the card. These Title words include stuff like Dreadful, Werewolf, Attack, Terror and Atomic. At the start of the game you deal six cards at look at the Title words, and try to build a B-Movie title from the words using additional intervening words as necessary. Using the Title words listed above you could build the B-Movie title ‘Terror Attack of the Dreadful Atomic Werewolf’.

Then you shuffle the cards back in the deck and deal six cards to each player, you get to lay Characters from your hand as your starting cast in your movie. As the game progresses you draw more cards and lay more Characters into your cast. The Characters have a defensive value (with which they defend your movie), but you can give them Locations and Props that increase their defensive value, or Locations into your opponent’s movies to decrease their defensive value.

You play Creatures, like ‘Zombies from Hell’ or ‘Severed Body Parts’ that attack your opponent’s movies, and kill their Characters if they are powerful enough. This is pretty much the crux of the game, as you need to murder your opponent’s cast and ruin their movie, so the game plays out just like a twisted version of the Scream movie series. Having mentioned Scream, there are lots of horror movie ‘rules’ written into the cards, like ‘Too Stupid To Live’ and ‘Only The Virgin Survives’.

There are two ‘Roll the Credits’ cards in the deck, and when you play one the game ends and you score up the game. You get points equal to the defensive value of your movie, including Characters, Props and Locations, plus a bonus if any of the cards in your movie or your hand include the Title words of the movie taken from the start of the game, which is important as two or three such cards can win you the game.

GROS is quick to explain and fast playing. If you have the right crew of players it can be a blast, especially if you say the fluff text on the cards when you play them. Most importantly you should say the title of the cards when you play them, because the cards are the heart and soul of playing GROS. You could be equipping the ‘Annoying Younger Brother’ with a ‘Shotgun’, or attacking your opponent’s movie with a ‘Space Mimic From Uranus’, or getting a ‘Three Picture Deal’ for one of your Characters.

GROS has two ‘sequel’ expansion decks, and is also one of a collection of ‘B-Movie’ card games released over the last decade by Z-Man Games, which can be mixed in together using the same basic concept. So if you like 70’s cinema and Asian flics, you can have a blaxploitation slash wushu mash up with ‘Bell-Bottomed Badasses’ and ‘Kung Fu Samurai’.

GROS is a great club game, not too serious and remains fun whether you play with just the minimum players or as many as six. The artwork is cool and together with the game text references lots of sci-fi and horror movies. It encourages a certain amount of grandstanding, dramatic pauses and silly voices, I like it a lot.