Invaders
Blast the descending invaders before they reach you.
How to play Invaders
Move your ship left and right along the bottom and fire upward. Destroy every invader in the formation to clear the wave. They march side to side, drop down, and speed up as fewer remain. Dodge the bombs they drop. Clear waves to score; lose all your lives and it’s game over.
Spend the formation wisely
Invaders rewards methodical shooting over frantic blasting. The formation marches side to side, drops a row toward you whenever it touches an edge, and, crucially, speeds up as its numbers fall. Every kill makes the survivors faster, which means the wave is a resource you spend: the slow, full grid is your safest time, and the last few aliens are a storm whose shape you chose shots ago. Pick a deliberate kill order and the wave stays manageable. Shoot whatever is nearest and you will eventually face three fast stragglers in the worst corners of the sky.
Column play is the classic tempo tool. Clearing a full vertical column on one side opens a channel you can fire up through while the formation shuffles past, and trimming the outer columns delays the moment the group touches a wall, postponing the drop that brings everyone a row closer. Some players prefer the opposite plan, hollowing out the middle and saving the edges for last; the formation stays wide and slow to reach the walls, at the price of bombs arriving from both flanks. Either plan beats no plan, which is what shooting the nearest alien amounts to.
Bombs, lives, and where to stand
There is no permanently safe spot on the bottom row, only better and worse habits. Bombs fall from the aliens above, so parking beneath the formation's thickest column is asking to be hit, and the corners are worse: when the formation drifts your way, the sideways room you need is exactly what a corner does not have. Live around the middle third of the screen, drift constantly in small steps, and dodge early and minimally. A bomb dodged by a hair and a bomb dodged by a full ship-width count the same, but the small dodge leaves your aim intact for the return shot. Keep one eye on the lowest aliens above your position; they are the likeliest to bomb you and the first worth removing.
Fire discipline
- Only one of your bolts flies at a time, so every miss disarms you while it travels. Fire when a shot can land, not to feel busy.
- Kill the lowest invaders first; height is time.
- Against the last fast few, stop chasing. Park where they are headed, fire on the beat of their march, and let them walk into it.
- Use the calm after a cleared wave to reset toward the center of the screen.
Waves and lives are a budget
Clearing the formation brings a fresh wave and keeps your score rolling, so the real measure of a run is how many lives each wave costs you. The first waves should cost nothing: the march is slow, the bombs are sparse, and any life lost there is a concentration problem, not a difficulty problem. Treat a lost ship as a signal to slow down for the next thirty seconds rather than speed up, because deaths cluster when players panic-fire and drift into bombs they would normally sidestep. It also pays to sync with the march itself. The formation moves on a beat, and aliens at the ends of rows are easiest to hit the moment the group reverses direction, when their sideways motion briefly stalls. Fire on the turn, not into it, and the same shot that grazes a moving column lands square on a pausing one.
The accident that built a genre
Invaders pays tribute to Space Invaders, which Tomohiro Nishikado designed for Taito in 1978, building his own hardware to run it. The game's most famous feature was never planned. As players thinned the formation, the hardware had fewer sprites to draw and the survivors moved faster, and Nishikado kept the accelerating panic because it played better than the steady march he had intended. That accident became a template the whole medium still uses: the game gets harder as you do better. Space Invaders was such a phenomenon in Japan that a story spread of a national 100-yen coin shortage, a legend that is probably exaggerated and gets retold anyway because it captures the scale. It also planted the arcade high score as an institution, a number whose only job is to outlive your run. This version keeps the march, the drop, the speed-up, and the score, and the way past a button-masher's total has not changed since 1978: control the order of your kills, keep your feet moving, and never waste the only bolt you have.
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Invaders: frequently asked questions
Why do the invaders speed up?
As you destroy them, the survivors march faster: the last few are the hardest to catch.
How do I last longer?
Pick off the edges to slow their descent, and keep moving so their bombs can’t line up on you.
Why do the invaders speed up as I shoot them?
Fewer invaders on screen means the game redraws faster, so the survivors move quicker. It mirrors the classic arcade original, where the same effect began as a hardware quirk and became the signature challenge.
Which invaders should I shoot first?
Target the lowest ones. They are closest to reaching your level and are the ones dropping bombs on you. Clearing from the bottom up keeps the formation higher and buys you time.
Where should I position my ship?
Bias toward the middle third of the screen and keep drifting in small steps. Corners are traps, because when the formation shifts your way you run out of dodge room. Stand under thin parts of the formation, not its thickest column, and step away from bombs early with the smallest move that works.
How do I deal with the last one or two fast invaders?
Do not chase them shot for shot. Predict where they are heading, move to that spot, and fire so your bolt meets them. Leading the target beats reacting to it.
What is the point of clearing one column down the side?
It opens a lane you can shoot up repeatedly and slows how quickly the formation marches into a wall and drops. It is a reliable way to control the pace of a wave.
Can I shoot more than one bolt at a time?
Usually only one of your shots is on screen at once, so a missed shot leaves you briefly unarmed. Wait for a clear line before firing rather than spraying into empty space.
Is Invaders free to play?
Yes. Invaders is completely free on Inkplay, with no download, no sign-up, and no in-game purchases. Open the page and play instantly on desktop or mobile.
Can I play Invaders unblocked?
Yes. Invaders runs entirely in your browser with no download, install, or plugins, so it loads instantly and keeps working even on school or work networks where bigger game sites get blocked.
More games to play
In the mood for more? Try Snake, Breakout, Pong, Blocks, or browse all arcade games and the full games list on Inkplay. Invaders also appears in Retro Games.