Grave Robbers From Outer Space

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Grave Robbers From Outer Space is a 2001 card game released by Z-Man Games spoofing the making of low-budget horror movies. The idea is to have the highest Defensive Strength when someone plays a Roll The Credits card or the draw pile is empty. Defensive Strength is increased by playing Character (such as The Prom Queen or The Aged Vampire Hunter) cards into your "movie" and giving characters Props like The Chainsaw or Big-Ass 'Fro, and from Location cards (The Funhouse, Camp Lake Zirconia, etc.) Other players try to lower each others' defense by killing characters with Creatures (Dracula, Demonic God Up to No Good, Killer Vegetables, etc.), negative Locations, and using Special Effects cards that can be used to perform things like doubling a Creature's strength or destroying another player's Location.

Basically if someone made a card game based on this wiki, this would be it.

So far the series is made up of nine games, each covering a different genre of movies:

Grave Robbers From Outer Space makes fun of horror and sci-fi movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space, Friday the 13 th, Carrie, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, The Universal horror series, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Grave Robber's 2: Skippy's Revenge is an expansion with more horror/sci-fi. Grave Robbers 3 is scheduled for release near the end of 2009.

Cannibal Pygmies In the Jungle of Doom makes fun of pulp-style jungle movies like King Kong, Indiana Jones, Allan Quatermain and Tarzan.

Kung Fu Samurai On Giant Robot Island covers Asian cinema. Mostly it's kung-fu and Hong Kong action flicks, but there's a bit of Kaiju and Anime thrown in too.

Bell-Bottomed Badasses On the Mean Streets of Funk covers "70's action movies," but mostly it's Blacula and all the movies they were making fun of in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

Berserker Halflings From the Dungeon of Dragons spoofs swords and sorcery flicks like Conan, The Lord of the Rings, Hawk the Slayer, Beastmaster and Labyrinth.

Scurvy Musketeers of the Spanish Main spoofs Swashbuckler movies like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Zorro, The Princess Bride, The Three Musketeers, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Harryhausen Sinbad movies.

Bushwhackin' Varmint's Out of Sergio's Butte for Westerns.

Silent...But Deadly Night covers Christmas classics like the Rudolph movies, A Christmas Carol, Its a Wonderful Life, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Christmas Story and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Tropes used in Grave Robbers From Outer Space include:
  • Ambiguous Gender: The Way Too Pretty Elf from Berserker Halfings has the Male trait, but his special thing is that cards that normally only work on females also work on him.
  • Chainmail Bikini: In Berserker Halflings.
  • Chinese Vampire
  • The Chosen One: The Predestined Hero from Berserker Halflings.
  • Damsel in Distress: From Scurvy Musketeers.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Demonic God Up To No Good from Berserker Halflings, who's about as tough as Creatures get and gets nastier for every magical Character he's attacking.
  • Evil Vizier: The Grand Vizier in Berserker Halflings. Complete with flavor text asking why the King even trusts this guy.
  • Fur Bikini: There's a card in Cannibal Pygmies that assumes all the women in your movie are wearing these by the end of the game, and they're worth extra points.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: In Bushwhackin' Varmints.
  • Humongous Mecha: In, where else, Kung-Fu Samurai.
  • I Am Not Left-Handed: "Why are you smiling?"
  • Mix and Match: Arguably the real fun of the games comes from them being completely compatible with each other and shuffling the different decks together for truly chaotic games.
  • Naughty Tentacles: The Hentai Demon in Kung-Fu Samurai which must attack a female character...if one's available.
  • Never Say "Die": While the other games describe the act of removing characters from play as killing them, the Christmas game just calls them "removed."
  • Of Corsets Sexy
  • Pimp Duds: In Bell-Bottomed Badasses
  • Red Shirt: "The Guy Everyone Knows Will Get Killed" from Grave Robbers and "The Guy Who Dies to Remind Everyone This Isn't a Picnic" from Berserker Halflings.
  • Running Gag: Nearly every game has a card with "Say, is that a tentacle?" in the flavor text. Every game has a Skippy the Wonder Dog card, though in a few he's one of the Creatures. There's also generally a priest or occult-knowledgeable character who gets extra defense against "Supernatural" Creatures.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Bell-Bottomed Badasses has the "Huge Wad Of Cash" card which can cancel any other card by being given to the player using the offending card.
  • Stop Motion: The only actual "monsters" in Scurvy Musketeers's Creature selection are a stop motion sea serpent and a generic stop motion mythological creature.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works

"Hey Pierre, what's that little bitty sword going to do to me all the way over there?"
WHOOSH, THUD!
"Who knew you could throw a sword?"

"What is that, senor?"
"It's a 'Z'."
"Look more like a '2' to me."

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