Players take on the roles of Experts seeking to understand the Alien player, who is seeking to be understood. The Experts will create and transmit ‘signals’ to the Alien, who has certain rules for how to respond that must be deduced by the Experts.
On a turn, the Experts arrange black and white pieces on a mat, discussing and debating how and what to send. Once finished, the Alien then replies by using pre-set rules only they can see to add, remove, and adjust the signal. The Experts try to guess the pre-set rules to win cooperatively with the Alien.
After succeeding at the first round, Experts then reset and continue with the same Alien, except new rules are in play on top of the previous ones. Players must work through three rounds to ‘solve’ an Alien, and complete this challenge of communication and logic.