title image

XenoShyft

Strategy

Ratings

Age

13+

Category

Strategy

Languages

English

XenoShyft is a strategic deck-building game that blends base defense and resource management. Players take on the role of a commander in the Nortek Corporation, tasked with defending their base against waves of horrific alien enemies. By recruiting troops, purchasing equipment, and coordinating tactical strikes, you must survive nine rounds of increasing intensity. The game features deep strategic layers, allowing for specialized divisions and powerful equipment combinations to thwart the Hive's evolution.

Dinsun Expert Review

Our Expert Score

85/100

Xenoshyft brings a brutal, high-fidelity deck-building experience to mobile that captures the claustrophobic dread of sci-fi horror. Unlike many deck-builders that focus on a slow build-up, Xenoshyft throws you into the meat grinder immediately. You aren't just building a deck; you are managing a squad of soldiers and equipping them with advanced weaponry to survive waves of nightmarish hive-mind aliens. The tactical depth is immense, as you must decide whether to invest in stronger troops or immediate utility items like grenades and med-kits.

The game's difficulty is notorious, but it feels earned. Every decision—from how you position your troops in the lane to which division you choose to specialize in—carries weight. The art style is gritty and detailed, effectively conveying the grim atmosphere of a doomed mining colony. While the learning curve is steep, the satisfaction of surviving a final wave with a sliver of base health remaining is unmatched in the genre. It's a must-play for hardcore strategy fans who enjoy a challenge that doesn't hold their hand.

Dinsun reviewed on: Fri Feb 27 2026

Features

1

1-4 player tactical gameplay

2

Gory, detailed sci-fi art style

3

Deep strategic resource management

4

Multiple player divisions with unique perks

5

Challenging wave-based progression

Tips & Walkthrough

Gameplays

Screenshot

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Q&A

Yes, XenoShyft supports fully cooperative multiplayer for up to four players.

Ratings & Reviews

Buggy
Sun May 28 2017 D4rkCyb3r

Game is fantastic, hands down. That's not in debate. The app is buggy though. You can't draw any of the free troops to fill your line, and if the screen ever locks, you can't proceed. It won't allow item selection when you unlock the screen. 😞 Very sad, as this awesome game needs more exposure, bad exposure may kill it prematurely though.

Excellent game. No bugs I can see
Sun Apr 05 2020 David Umstattd

A well made game of co-op troop management. Usually I find deck builders to have pasted on theme but this one has mechanics that decently reflect the theme it is trying to convey. Though this is weakened with the psyonics and gen mid expansion a bit I feel. A little practice has us winning easily at 2 division. Game is rather hard at 1 division. The difficulty settings are well gauged with easy being quite easy, normal being a decent challenge and hard being insane. I definitely suggest getting the elites expansion. It’s a couple bucks but gives a lot more theme and strategy to the game by allowing surviving troops to level up. My only complaint involves the UI for activating the expansions you have bought. There are expansions to the base game, an expandalone game, and expansions to that other game. Some of the expansions work with the base game some work on both and some only on the second game. This is the nature of the game, very complicated, but the UI doesn’t help at all by explaining the difference between playing Onslaught with the Dreadmire expansion and playing Dreadmire with the Onslaught expansion. It’s very confusing with no information to decipher the puzzle.

Potential But Too Many Issues
Fri Jun 30 2017 Flavanation

This app has a lot to love, good art and animations, smooth flow, and a good core engine. Too bad no one at CMON apparently ever played this game. This game is beyond hard, in many ways it is impossible to win. One example, in wave one, you could get a combination of two enemies that can nullify most of you attacks, this means in round one, through no fault of your own, you can lost half or more of your bases hp against the easiest wave, and that is just one example. The game is littered with impossible combinations. Once you get the engine down you should be able to get to round 7 consistently, but anything beyond that is all up to the random gods. I even bought some expansions in hopes it would make the game winnable. No luck there. In addition the app is buggy, constantly freezing and forcing you to close, save, and restart. So here is an app that should be getting four or even five stars getting two because CMON doesn't seem to care. Too bad.

Must be fixed! Works great!
Sat Nov 24 2018 Stone Family!

I took a chance on this, seeing all of the negative reviews, but the crashing issues are fixed! I had no issues on my iPhone X or iPad Air 2. It requires patience learning how to activate abilities/card effects (play the tutorial). Of course it's more fun co-op, but solo mode is a blast. This game is alot of fun and very challenging. Good luck!

Buggy Mess
Mon May 27 2019 flickerei geist

Buttons are tied to animations. So hitting the done button twice too quickly will skip entire phases, bypassing the game’s own warning prompts. An easy fix to this would be the ability to go back to acquire phase from deploy phase. A few cards need more detail, such as the Prototype Heat Lance Shotgun which doesn’t specify that it only targets it’s own lane. There are also other bugs such as being unable to discard certain cards during wrap-up phase, which ended up costing me a Hard game on the very last round.

Almost Great
Tue Jul 26 2022 Ordere

I really like this game as the coop is awesome. But it’s freaking buggy and there’s no way to undo some things you are stuck with it. It’s hard so these frustrating broken ai choices it forces you into break the game. Good job on the game, keep at it. It’s almost there.

Years later, still not balanced
Thu Dec 16 2021 Mythadrian

I like the idea of this game. I like the styling of this game. I like the system used by this game. I do not like the balance of this game. I get that the game creators like games that may be impossible to win even even if the player was clairvoyant and used perfect strategy. I don’t.

Great visuals, Asmodee’s same terrible interface
Sun Jul 11 2021 Sgt Amazing

This game looks great and keeps in the spirit of the board game. However, trying to play cards and/or their abilities is atrocious. Typical from Asmodee games on the phone that I have played. Spend more time trying to perform functions and actions than making strategic decisions.

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