Save the Earth from AR Space Invaders, now on iOS and Android

It’s time to go outside and wave our phones in the air again, not for Pokemon GO, but for another AR game – nostalgia hit Space Invaders: World Defense. The original Space Invaders is 45 years old and now it’s available on Android and iOS in an Augmented Reality variant.

Sprung in 1978, Space Invaders is one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time. Millions of kids all over the world played it for half a century on arcade machines, early Atari consoles, Nintendo systems, handheld video game consoles like Game Boy, PC, PlayStation and many more. There’s a 2007 mobile phone version of Space Invaders, but this time the beloved hit comes in the form of AR fun.

What’s it about?

This version of Space Invaders is subtitled ‘World Defense’ and here’s what you gotta do: you have to protect Mother Earth from, well, space invaders. The alien threat falls from the sky in the form of mighty cute 8-bit animated chunks of pixels. Like other AR games, Space Invaders: World Defense will not bring its own background for the gameplay. Instead, it will rely on you and your phone’s camera to provide the surroundings.

Just grab your phone (please, hold it firmly, you don’t want your brand new Galaxy S23 Ultra to fall victim to a 1978 game) and raise it high in the air. Animated aliens will begin to fall from the sky onto the ground and the surrounding buildings.Your job is to shoot them down and prevent them from destroying our world.

I want to see more before I download

There are two promotional videos of Space Invaders: World Defense that show what to expect. Let’s take a look first at the polished, Hollywood-style video:


Here we have an upbeat production, starting with an arcade machine in a dark game room. The camera pans closer and closer to the arcade machine, until we, the viewers, are immersed in it. Once in the world of the arcade, we see a young man walking down the street, oblivious to his surroundings. An oddly shaped shadow is casted over him and he takes off his earbuds. There’s a ‘Wow!’ look on his face. Next, we see a peaceful, defenseless farmer out in the field with 8-bit aliens hanging above him and his cattle. From there, we’re transported several thousand feet up in the air. A woman is just waking up from sleep and she’s taking a glance through the window of the plane she’s on. The city below is alien-infected. The news all over the world is on fire and several young people grab their phones and get out to crush those adorable aliens.

Now let’s take a closer look at the actual gameplay, presented in the other promotional video:


The game is in fullscreen mode and there’s a narrow bar at the top with stats info: what’s your score and what stage you’re on. There’s a circular aim in the middle portion of the screen and in the bottom – a space aircraft, shooting at the space invaders. The aliens can crawl out of space portals not only from top to bottom, but sideways as well.

‘Play with caution. Be aware of your surroundings’, reads a fine print message in the far bottom of the screen when playing. Good advice, given how many problems Pokemon GO caused. Drivers playing Pokemon GO while operating their vehicles caused damage in the range of $2 billion to $7.3 billion in the first 148 days after the game was launched in the US, claims report by researchers at Purdue University.

Space Invaders: World Defenders is available on Google Play and the App Store.