Do not end the game by closing site (always use quit in the game menu) or it will freeze on next start.
Genre: Adventure
Perspective: 3rd-person
Gameplay: Puzzle elements
Published by: GameTek
Developed by: Housemarque Ltd.
Released: 1996
Platform: DOS
There are games that, for some reason, were not very popular even immediately after the release, despite the fact that they were excellently made. It is to such games that Alien Incident belongs - a quest released in 1996 from a little-known Finnish company Housemarque. The fact that the music for the game was composed by Purple Motion adds doubly interest to the game! But more about that later - first about the game itself.
The style of the game I would describe as parodic-childish (this does not mean that only children should play the game!), In the best traditions of Space Quest, Simon the Sorcerer and Day of the Tentacle. The main character is a teenager named Benjamin who visits his uncle's house on Halloween. His uncle, a homegrown scientist, is trying to activate his latest invention, a wormhole generator. Surprisingly, it works and opens a wormhole to another galaxy, bringing an alien spaceship to Earth. The aliens are unhappy and take Uncle Ben to force him to send them back, leaving Ben alone in the house. This is where the game begins.
Excellent pixel graphics at the level of classic quests from Sierra and Lucas Arts are diversified by rendered cutscenes (by the way, I participated in the creation of the animation ... who would you think? Skaven!). Here and there there are various "highlights" that could only come to the mind of sceners: smooth darkening of Ben's figure depending on whether he is standing in the light or not (compare two screenshots), a very beautiful water effect (when Ben needs swim underwater), smoke and fire effects and much more!
The main advantage of a good quest is humor. In this regard, the developers of Alien Incident also succeeded - completely harmless, slightly naive jokes really lift the mood. It's nice when there is humor even in the smallest detail, for example, when they show dialogues taking place on an alien ship between the alien boss and his subordinates, the boss plays Pong. The dialogues themselves are also very funny, the aliens themselves turned out to be especially colorful, no doubt.
The difficulty of the game is quite high. On the one hand, I practically did not have such moments when nothing could be done for a long time, the answer was always found quite quickly. Of course, the logic of the puzzles and the player's always clear idea of \u200b\u200bwhat he needs to do next played a role in this. On the other hand, after Ben manages to get out of the house, the number of game screens on which something can be done starts to number in the tens. There is a forest, and a cemetery, and an observatory, and an abandoned mine, and later you can get on an alien ship (I haven’t succeeded yet). The number of different items is also large, after use they usually do not disappear, which only complicates the game.
And finally, about the music. Purple Motion wrote 13 tracks for the game, and some of them are divided into several more parts (there are even ten), so there is a lot of music, different and good. Since the action of the game mainly takes place at night, the music is correspondingly mysterious and slightly gloomy, there are many samples of wind instruments. Purple Motion uses special effects like gurgling water and the chirping of cicadas (in the cemetery and in the forest) to give the atmosphere, while on the track Meanwhiles some voices and whispers are heard, and so on.