Refugium Games released a title that sounds very promising in concept. Greyhill Incident plays on the 90s tropes of alien abduction and government denials galore. 90s pop culture was full of alien and UFO conspiracies, with films and shows like Independence Day, Men in Black, and The X-Files to fuel the fire. This game attempts to take that alien abduction concept and turn it into a survival horror game. Unfortunately, the game is riddled with bugs and the gameplay is painstakingly dull, making this one of the worst titles to release this year.
Story
The game takes place during the early 90s and you play as Ryan Baker, a fellow neighbor in the rural town of Greyhill. The town has been seeing lights in the sky and odd occurrences, causing the community to form a neighborhood watch that does nightly sweeps for surveillance. The game begins on the night that Ryan is tasked with watch duty and starts to uncover the “horror” that lurks outside.
The townspeople of Grehill seem to be aware of the aliens' existence and refuse to call the police due to the fact that “they will lock us up in an asylum” and the entire government is aware of the alien abductions. This is what leads Ryan on his journey that will ultimately become a lot more personal shortly after the game begins.
Gameplay
Boy, this one is rough. First off, I really tried to enjoy this game. There are not many alien survival horror games, which is a real shame. The concept of being abducted by aliens from another galaxy is terrifying! This would be a perfect opportunity to show creativity in how the aliens react to humans and what they are capable of. Unfortunately, the horror aspect of this game is non-existent and this is partially due to the fact that the game is full of bugs that can spoil jumpscares. Within my first 30 minutes of my palythrough I had experienced a bug where three aliens spawned directly in front of me while an npc was talking. At first I thought this was intentional but I soon realized that the aliens were stoic. They did not react to me and I could not interact with them. This completely took me out of the immersion and forced me to restart the game. Sure enough, after I loaded back up the aliens did not glitch this time and I carried on with the game.
This occurred one other time in the game which is completely unacceptable for a game based on survival horror. Aliens fast walk to you when alerted and attempt to choke you to death with their spaghetti arms and the game requires you to button mash to break free. Even this button prompt was broken during my playthrough, not registering inputs properly and causing me to unfairly die.
Ryan can equip a baseball bat and a revolver but both are very janky to use and neither are very effective against the bullet sponge aliens that will stalk you to death. The only true defensive maneuver in this game that semi-works is the ability to hide. The aliens have impeccable hearing so any little noise you make will alert them to your exact location, forcing you to find a hiding spot in a trash can or under a bed. This is not a new concept to survival horror, however, it is terribly executed in this game. I accidentally made some noise right in front of a trash can with an alien nearby. It came to investigate the noise, stopping right in front of my hiding spot and found nothing. The alien stayed in this area and did not walk away. I waited over 10 minutes to see if the A.I. would move but I was utterly frustrated and ultimately had to get out of the hiding spot and hope I could escape the bugged button mash grab. Spoiler - I didn’t.
Greyhill Incident quickly becomes a chore than a frightfully good time. The gameplay mechanics are very rough around the edges, A.I. is horrifyingly terrible, and the main objectives are tedious “go here and fetch this.” If the scare factor is gone, then the gameplay needs to be fun to make up for the lack of horror, which is very clearly not the case with this title.
Audio and Visual
The voice acting is all over the place when it comes to quality and timing. Some lines from Ryan are acted decently but then quickly follow up with an off-tone and unconvincing manner. The same is said for the entire cast but partial blame is due to the writing. Some conversations seem so cringy that it’s not even laughably bad, it's just bad. The sound effects in the game are decent enough for a rural alien invasion, although the aliens' “weapons” and gadgets sound like something recorded from a 90s arcade. Pretty disappointing.
The best part of the Greyhill Incident is the atmosphere. The dark and eerie rural setting does look pretty good initially. The lighting is well done to up the scare factor but unfortunately, it isn’t enough to save the game. Character models look outdated and the aliens are so basic in design they are laughably generic. Again, the setting and environment are decently made which is really a shame because this could have been a stellar horror experience but instead, it crashes.
Replayability
This is a very short title, which some may not mind if the game was good. I would not replay this title, even with updates and complete overhauls to the combat mechanics and AI. It is really rough to say that a game did not provide any fun factor since that is its purpose. But I have to say it for this title. Fun was the intention but instead, I got nothing but frustration.
Verdict
Greyhill Incident has a cool concept that is not explored much in the survival horror genre, but I think I am starting to see why. This game is riddled with bugs, terrible A.I., sub-par voice acting, and stale combat. I wanted to like this game but it gave me every reason not to. Other than setting the mood through its dark atmosphere, this game lets down on every aspect.
Greyhill Incident is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam.
