You have been captured by aliens and put in their zoo. All players are trying to escape in the shortest time possible. As you perform actions, you pay hours to accomplish each one. You are searching for food for the trip, robots to navigate the alien ship you must steal, other captured aliens to help you carry all the stuff, and weapons to deal with inevitable guards you will encounter. Early in the game the food and robots are plentiful and cost very few hours to find--alien friends and weapons take longer to find. As the game progresses food and robots become harder to find and aliens become easier to recruit. Weapons also become easier to find as the guards become aware of your plans and bring in more firepower. As you draw items (cubes) you may also trip an alarm. This means that all sources of food, robots, hiding places, and weapons will be moved to new locations and you will have to face guards. As you carry more things, you move slower, but alien allies can help. They can help you find items more quickly, fight guards, carry items and scout new supplies. Your struggle ends when you find the escape ship and have enough food and robots to leave. But this may not be the end of the game. You must still defeat the guards watching the ship. Then other players can still beat the first player to escape if they can spend less hours to get out. —description from the designer