Greyhill Incident is a story-focused first-person Survival Horror game revolving around an alien invasion of a small town in 1990's middle America during one fateful night. Inspired by films like Signs, Fire in the Sky, and The McPherson Tape, the game was developed and published by Refugium Games (Indie developer Aaron Roller, with co-writing from a family member and motion capture work outsourced to a small mocap studio) and is their first game.
Players take the role of Ryan Baker, a divorced father living with his moody son Henry and faithful dog Max, along with his eccentric brother Bob who claims to have been abducted by aliens when they were younger and who lives in a camper down the street. As a member of the town's eccentric Neighborhood Watch, Ryan is sent out to investigate strange happenings during the night and finds himself in the middle of a full-scale alien invasion of his small town.
Greyhill Incident contains examples of:
- The '90s: This game takes place during the 1990's.
- Batter Up!: You're armed with a baseball bat. It can stagger aliens for a couple seconds and even knock them out for several seconds with enough hits, but it can't permanently kill them.
- Blood Knight: Brandon, the self-appointed leader of Greyhill's neighborhood watch, is a Vietnam War vet who speaks frequently of his service during the war, has U.S. flags all over his house, often speaks disparagingly of Ryan's manhood, and apparently once shot the hat off Ryan's son during a BBQ to prove his marksmanship.
- The Cameo: Gaming youtubers MathChief and Daz Black are briefly mentioned as residents of Greyhill under their real names. You can speak to Black very briefly from behind his house's front door for an easily missable achievement.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Ryan's brother Bob was abducted by aliens when the two of them were younger and has had a few screws loose ever since. He lives in a camper down the road, has lined his bedroom with tinfoil, has chemistry sets and monitoring equipment all over his living space, and has apparently written one or two alien conspiracy books.
- Crazy-Prepared: Brandon's house is filled with fire extinguishers, with at least 2 or 3 in each room. It's also surrounded by dead Greys, showing that when they came for him he did not go quietly.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The game starts with Ryan's dog Max cornering something in the backyard shed, then eventually chasing it into the cornfield.
- Government Conspiracy: It seems the government is deliberately turning a blind eye to the alien abductions and even covering them up, with a newscast assuring neighboring communities that nothing untoward is happening even as the inhabitants of Greyhill are systematically being abducted.
- The Greys: The invading aliens are of the classic Grey variety, right down to their saucer-shaped UFOs and seeming fixation on anal probing.
- Resources Management Gameplay: Not only are revolver bullets hard to find, there simply isn't enough of them to kill every alien in the game. You'll have to stealth your way past at least a few of the alien encounters. Also, 1 alien is a mandatory kill (though the game helpfully provides you 2 bullets just prior to this sequence), and the final area has no cover/hiding places and 2-3 aliens, so saving enough bullets to kill them makes it much easier as you otherwise have to figure out what you're supposed to do to finish the game while they constantly chase you.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: You find a revolver from a crashed police car early in the game. It can kill aliens with just a couple bullets, but ammo is extremely scarce for it (to the point you'll usually only find a single bullet when searching a house).
- Ten-Second Flashlight: The flashlight is a handcranked flashlight (apparently battery-powered flashlights are disrupted by the aliens' technology), and thus only lasts a short time before needing to be cranked up again.
- Tinfoil Hat: Most of the residents of Greyhill you meet are wearing one, believing it will help protect them from the aliens. One early objective involves finding enough tinfoil rolls to completely wrap your entire body in hopes this will help somehow.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: The town's preacher, Father Graham, has mistaken the alien invasion for The Rapture, and is completely happy when the aliens abduct him.
