Greyhill Incident Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

Greyhill Incident is an alien invasion survival horror developed and published by Refugium Games. I was very interested in the inclusion of the classic Grey alien type since they are rarely used in alien horror games. After watching the trailer, I was stoked to finally try the game, but I just wish the game was half as good as the trailer makes it out to be. Greyhill Incident has an interesting concept for a survival horror game, but it’s overall very mediocre and never really feels fun.

The game takes place in America during the early 1990’s in the town of Greyhill. Even with the increasing paranormal experiences, the residents of the town of Greyhill are too afraid to call the police from fear of being sent to the psych ward. The media passes off the extraterrestrial sightings as weather balloons. The residents believe that the government is also involved and that they are lying to civilians. The entire town boards up their windows and issues a neighborhood watch. Players take on the role of Ryan as he starts his job of checking in on the neighbors. After finding problems in his shed, Ryan sets out to find what is going on in the town of Greyhill tonight.

Greyhill Incident has quite a good atmosphere. The Unreal Engine that it uses greatly helps out with the graphics. Corn fields look awesome and lighting effects are quite good. The game definitely has the look of a great survival horror. Your main enemy is the standard Grey alien. They actually look pretty creepy with their classic big eyes and small stature. You only get a revolver and bat to fight them off with. The revolver kills Greys in two shots and the bat can knock them out and stun them for a few seconds.

The game has a sort of stealth system. You can hide from enemies by getting inside of certain objects (cars, trashcans, under beds, closets, etc). Sadly, hiding does little good since you can’t make out much of your surroundings while hiding. I found it much easier to hide behind walls and run from most of the enemies. Knocking them out with a bat and then running ahead of them to lose line of sight was the way to go for much of the entire game.

Ammo for the revolver is very scarce. You’ll only find a handful of bullets throughout the entire game. The overall story is not taken seriously at all. It seems serious from the start, but then just delves into some extremely tongue-in-cheek plot and dialogue. I can understand comedy elements in horror games, but this game goes too far. We all know about the “anal probe” trope involving aliens by now and this game goes all in on that cliché as well as the “tin foil hat” meme. All of it together makes the story less interesting and more of an eye roll. I would have much preferred a serious approach.

It’s too bad this game didn’t take itself seriously enough to have an interesting story. It could have been quite intense if what you do in the game was more meaningful in saving lives and actually progressing an interesting narrative. Characters are so very wooden. I don’t care about any of them and it seems like they don’t even care about themselves with the lack of seriousness they display. You know as little about what is going on by the ending as you do from the beginning for the most part. There is extremely little replay value here also. The only reason to replay would be to grab certain collectibles that can be missed, but they are very few in number.

The game is extremely linear for the most part. There are some sections that take you to a wide-open area, where you must explore to find items or simply just make your way over to a gate. Areas that are inaccessible are often covered by an invisible wall until you perform a certain objective then you can return and go that way. If you’ve played any survival horror this game has the most basic of objectives that you’re done all too many times. It all gets repetitive very quickly.

The Grey is the only enemy type in the entire game. If they see you, they will immediately give chase then grab you. Once grabbed, you have a certain amount of time to fight them off by spamming a button before they successfully abduct your character and the game ends. Some parts can be quite intense if you don’t go for kills since there are some areas with around four Greys. You have to keep your overall noise level down by crouching and moving and you must limit your visibility by keeping your light off.

For what it is, Greyhill Incident has a unique concept and graphics to go along with it. The trailer makes the game out to be way better than what you actually get. It might be worth a playthrough for the curious mainly for its alien invasion theme, but I can’t see many people coming back to this game or even thinking of it as memorable. Some people might like the light-hearted story, but for me, it ruins the game.

The Good:
+ Interesting theme of Grey aliens
+ Graphics are pretty good for an indie title
+ Atmosphere is quite good

The Bad:
- The game gets repetitive quickly
- The story isn’t taken seriously at all
- Way too short (3-4 hours)
- The game can be glitchy here and there with random bugs (this is not that big of an issue though)