This game works best when playeed indoors in a building with many hiding spaces and room to run, and multiple levels helps.
To start, you pick out two kids to be “aliens.” All of the other kids will be humans. These aliens take two weapons — a flashlight, ping-pong paddle, plastic bowling pin, or other similar objects work well — which are shown to the group, out of the room, and hide them anywhere in the building that will be semi-visible, and not require the searchers to open anything.
As the two aliens are off hiding their weapons, two of the remaining humans are selected to be “medics.” The aliens should not know who the medics are, as this adds an element of fun to the game. When the aliens return to the room, the humans are sent off to hide and search for the weapons. After a minute or so, the aliens are sent out to find the humans.
The aliens will run around and try to tag the humans; if a human is tagged, they are “dead.” Only medics can heal dead humans (who are lying on the ground where they were tagged), and can do so by touching them. If both medics are dead, then no one can be healed. If a human finds a weapon he can then touch an alien with the weapon, and the alien will die. A weapon can only be used once, and a used weapon will be given to the alien that it killed. There is no way for a dead alien to come back to life.
The game is over when one of two things happen:
1) All of the humans are dead.
2) All of the aliens are dead.
This is a great game, and I think you’ll really love it. I know we do.