Space Invaders Playing Cards

DUN-DUN....DUN-DUN....DUN-DUN...

What's that sound? (It's not Jaws) Jump in your tank and get ready to defend the Earth because the Space Invaders are coming to play...cards.

This deck of cards was released in 2013 by a company called Kikkerland. They come in a plastic snap case that is mostly clear with Invader game graphics which look nice on the case but make it difficult to take a good photo with the cards in it.

The cards all feature pixel art. I really like the card back design with the green Invaders. Both Jokers have the same design. If I put this together, the Jokers would have been the flying saucer and the tank, both of which are absent from the deck.

You might have noticed the cards look a little odd. That's because they're plastic and have lots of tiny holes. Being plastic, they're waterproof but if you've ever tried to play with wet "waterproof" cards before, you know they end up sticking together.

The face cards have the same graphics in every suit. Being Space Invaders, there's not a lot of characters to choose from so I can't fault them for being identical. The colors are inverted from the numeric cards, with the suit color being the background and the characters being white. Maybe they wanted to stick to the game colors for the Invaders and not make them black and red?

Here's a close up of the cards. All the tiny holes make the cards somewhat see through. But don't worry about anyone cheating when you play with these.

If you look through the face, you can see the back design. But if you look through the back, you can't see the face. I'm sure there's a simple way they did this but I think it's pretty cool.

The next time you're hanging out on a moon base and need to pass some time on your shift protecting the Earth, you should probably be watching the radar. But if you're really bored you can break out these Space Invader cards for some solitaire that won't destroy life as we know it if you lose.