Crop Circle Crew Guide – How to Draw Perfect Crop Circles, Avoid the Farmer and Get 3 Stars
Crop Circle Crew is a free UFO game for your browser and phone. You fly a little flying saucer over a moonlit field and press the crop flat with your tractor beam to draw giant crop circles. Every night has a glowing pattern to copy, and you must finish before sunrise without getting photographed by the farmer. At dawn the camera rises into the sky to show your work, and the next morning the local newspaper writes about it. This guide explains how the scoring works and how to get 3 stars on all 12 nights.
The basics
- Fly: move the mouse and the saucer follows the cursor. You can also use WASD or the arrow keys. On a phone or tablet, drag anywhere on the screen.
- Beam: hold the left mouse button or Space. On touch screens, hold the big BEAM button. Crop under the beam is laid flat.
- Wide beam: press Q or Shift, or tap ◎. It covers a much bigger area. The narrow beam is for rings, lines and letters.
- Stake: press E or right-click, or tap 📍. See the stake trick below.
- Overview: press Tab or the map button to zoom out over the whole field. Scroll or pinch to zoom. P or Esc pauses.
The view holds still while you draw and only scrolls when the saucer gets near the edge of the screen, so the cursor always points at the same spot in the field.
How the match score works
The MATCH percentage in the top left is the most important number. It compares the crop you have laid with the glowing pattern:
- Every bit of the pattern you flatten raises it.
- Every bit of crop you flatten outside the pattern lowers it. Spilled crop shows up red on the mini-map.
- A thin strip around the edge of every shape is free. A little wobble along the lines costs nothing.
- The dark wheel tracks of the tractor (the tramlines) have no crop, so they don’t count either way.
The three marks on the match bar are the star goals for that night. You can press ✔ Finish once 40% of the pattern is done. If you don’t, the night ends automatically at sunrise.
The stake trick: perfect circles every time
Drawing a clean ring freehand is hard. The stake makes it easy:
- Fly close to the centre of a ring or disc and press E (or tap 📍). If you are within about 1.6 m of a centre, the stake snaps onto it and you hear a chime.
- The saucer is now on a rope. Moving around the stake is fast, but moving towards or away from it is slow, so it is easy to keep the same distance.
- When the rope length matches a ring in the pattern it locks on. The pink guide circle turns white, and you can fly all the way round without drifting. To move to a different ring, push firmly straight in or out.
- Press E again to pull the stake up.
For discs, the rope also locks at the right distances to fill them in rings from the outside in.
Wide or narrow?
- Use the wide beam for big discs and the alien face’s head. It is the fastest way to fill area.
- Switch to the narrow beam for rings, lines, letters and anything near a cut-out. The wide beam spills easily.
- In Greetings the alien’s eyes and mouth must stay standing. Fill around them with the narrow beam.
Watchers: don’t get photographed
From night 3 on, people are out in the dark:
- Farmer Joe patrols the edge of the field with a flashlight.
- Biscuit the dog trots next to him. If your beam is on within about 9 m of the dog, it barks and runs at you, and the farmer comes running to look.
- The night truck drives the dirt road around the field with its headlights on.
- UFO hunters stand on the hills and sweep the sky with searchlights.
While a light is on you, the eye meter in the top left fills. It fills faster when you are close, and much faster (×1.7) when your beam is on. When it is full, they snap a photo. Three photos and you are caught: the night ends, you get no stars and your score is cut to 30%. After a photo there is a short pause before the meter starts filling again, so fly out of the light straight away.
Tips:
- Watch the light cones on the mini-map and plan around them.
- Let go of the beam as soon as a light comes towards you. A saucer without a beam is much harder to notice.
- The meter slowly empties when nobody can see you.
Cows
Cows graze in the pasture next to the field, and on some nights they wander into the crop and trample it. Hover over a cow and hold the beam to beam it up for +60 points. While the beam is lifting a cow it doesn’t flatten any crop, so you can safely grab cows that are standing on the pattern.
Scoring and coins
| Bonus | Points |
|---|---|
| Pattern match | 10 per percent (up to 1,000) |
| Each cow beamed up | 60 |
| Never photographed (nights with watchers) | 150 |
| Finished early with 2 or more stars | 2 per second left before sunrise |
Getting caught cuts the pattern and cow points to 30%. You earn one coin for every 6 points.
Night goals
| Night | Field | Watchers | ★ | ★★ | ★★★ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 First Contact | Miller’s Farm | none | 55% | 72% | 86% |
| 2 Halo | Miller’s Farm | none | 55% | 72% | 86% |
| 3 Dumbbell | Miller’s Farm | farmer | 55% | 72% | 86% |
| 4 Triple Moon | Lavender Valley | farmer, cows in the field | 55% | 72% | 85% |
| 5 Smiley | Lavender Valley | farmer, dog | 55% | 72% | 85% |
| 6 Hello Earth | Lavender Valley | farmer, truck | 55% | 72% | 85% |
| 7 Solar System | Canola Hills | farmer, dog, cows in the field | 55% | 72% | 85% |
| 8 Greetings | Canola Hills | farmer, truck | 55% | 72% | 84% |
| 9 Flower of Life | Canola Hills | farmer, dog, truck, cows in the field | 55% | 70% | 83% |
| 10 Triskelion | Old Stones Downs | farmer, UFO hunter | 55% | 70% | 83% |
| 11 Julia Set | Old Stones Downs | farmer, dog, UFO hunter, cows in the field | 55% | 70% | 83% |
| 12 Mothership | Old Stones Downs | farmer, dog, truck, UFO hunter, cows in the field | 55% | 70% | 82% |
Each night unlocks with one star on the night before. Night 11, the Julia Set, is based on a real crop circle that appeared next to Stonehenge in 1996.
How to get 3 stars
- Plant the stake for every circle. Most patterns are made of rings and discs that share a few centres. One stake per centre gives you perfect rings.
- Trace the edges, then fill. Run the narrow beam along the outline first, then fill the inside with the wide beam.
- Check the mini-map. Red spots are spilled crop. Missed patches show as dark gaps in the white.
- Don’t chase the last 1%. Once you are past the three-star mark, press Finish for the time bonus.
- Upgrade in the Hangar. Wide Beam makes the wide beam bigger, Turbo Thrusters fly faster, Stealth Paint makes watchers notice you 14% more slowly per level, Cow Magnet lifts cows faster and from further away, and Long Night adds 15 seconds before sunrise per level. Coins also buy 8 saucers (from Retro Red to the Disco Ball) and 6 beam colours, including a rainbow beam.
Pattern Lab: make and share your own
The ✏️ Pattern Lab in the main menu lets you design your own crop circles with discs, rings, lines and ovals. Shapes can be set to keep standing to cut holes, and the symmetry option copies every shape 2 to 8 times around the centre for instant mandalas. Choose a field, switch the farmer and dog on or off, then save and fly it. You can keep up to 30 designs, edit, copy and delete them, and share any design as a short code that a friend can import.