Rating | -1 | Linearity | narrow |
Reasonability | deductive | Connectivity | moderate |
Difficulty | easy | Relevance | strong |
Interface | 1st paned simple | Real-time | minor |
Your uncle, a scientist/inventor, opens a wormhole to a distant galaxy, which accidentally transports an alien spaceship to earth. The aliens are megalomaniacs, and capture your uncle, hoping to learn the secret of his machine. Once they've got that, they'll invade earth (and the rest of the galaxy). It's up to teenage Ben (that's you) to save your uncle, the earth, and a galaxy or two.
This is a simple cartoon game aimed for a younger audience (I would guess 10-13 years old). The characters are the typical cartoon variety. Your goals are always clear.
The challenges aren't difficult, but they still manage to draw you into the game world. They're mostly simple inventory usage, but (mostly) they're not obvious lock-and-key problems: you have to think about the items to realise how an object can be a key.
The challenge layout is -- or appears to be -- non-linear enough so that you don't feel like you're on rails. There's enough scope that you are usually not sure which is the next challenge to solve, but you know your goals and you always have some obvious impediment or exploration in front of you.
The interface is simple and intuitive. The graphics are well done, nicely textured despite the old VGA blockiness.
Alien Incident is a well-made, entertaining game. It's the meat and potatoes of adventure offerings: there are no serious flaws (unless you count one mappable maze), but no elements of greatness, either.