Playing Alien Incident means guiding a teenager named Benjamin through a parade of inventory puzzles after his uncle accidentally portals green, Casper-like aliens into his backyard.
A point-and-click comedy that trade laser guns for fuse boxes
You might expect a 1996 sci-fi adventure about an extraterrestrial invasion to give you a raygun. Instead, this MS-DOS title from Housemarque Ltd. hands you ropes, keys, passwords, and discarded junk. You play as Benjamin Richards, whose eccentric uncle, Alberto Einstone, built a Wormhole Spawner and immediately got himself kidnapped by an alien leader known as Boss.
The gameplay relies entirely on standard point-and-select mechanics. You click to navigate pre-rendered 2D backgrounds, talk to weird locals, and figure out how to combine odd items in your pockets to bypass obstacles. It takes heavy cues from LucasArts classics like Day of the Tentacle, focusing on low-stress puzzle solving rather than fast reflexes.
Where the puzzle logic shines and where it stalls
The puzzles themselves are generally fair and logical. You spend your time repairing broken machinery, cracking safe codes, and discovering secret doors across a surprisingly varied set of locations. You start at Einstone's mansion, but soon wander through a cemetery, an antiques shop, city sewers, and eventually the alien mothership.
However, the game suffers from strict linearity and tedious backtracking. Items you used early on often need to be reused later, forcing you to retrace your steps through empty screens. There are also maze-like sequences in the crypt, underwater zones, and the spaceship that exist mostly to pad out the runtime.
Short runtime and mid-nineties technical quirks
Even with the maze sections, most players finish the story in under four hours. It functions almost like a bite-sized warm-up game for genre veterans. Visually, the bright anime-inspired sprites look great, but the animation has odd quirks. For instance, Ben's mouth rarely moves when he speaks.
The audio relies on .MOD tracker music that sounds punchy on a Sound Blaster card, though there is no voice acting outside the animated intro. Back in 1996, players also complained about game-breaking save crashes. Thankfully, the developers built in an early automatic recovery system designed to catch disaster saves if the engine choked.
Why you should play Alien Incident free in your browser today
The game sits in Finnish history as one of the few commercial point-and-click titles ever produced there. Shortly after publisher GameTek, Inc. shipped it, Housemarque abandoned graphic adventures entirely to focus on high-octane action games.
If you want a light, non-violent comedy puzzle game with distinct mid-nineties energy, you can play Alien Incident online right now. You can jump straight into the DOS release free in your browser, with nothing to install and no setup required. The short length actually works in its favor today, making it a great single-evening playthrough for any classic graphic adventure fan.
