Alien invasion game: could you get them to the shelter by dawn?

The first night over Tarrow Bend

First Contact Night is a short alien invasion game told in eight decisions. You work the overnight desk at the county dispatch center in Tarrow Bend, a fictional river-valley town of a few thousand people. At 11:52 p.m. every phone line drops at once, and three lights settle low over the rooftops. The air starts to hum.

It doesn't take long to learn the one rule of the night: whatever the lights find outside when the hum stops, they take. The county plan says to go to the old shelter in the foot of the reservoir dam. Your neighbor is eighty-four and can't get there alone. The last call you took before the lines went dead was from a nine-year-old sitting in her father's truck in a ditch on Quarry Road. You have until the hum runs out.

How this episode plays

Two meters sit above the scene. The first, Hum stops in, counts the cycles left before the hum stops for good, and it only goes down. Cover shows how well hidden you are, in three bands: Hidden, Seen and Exposed. Careful choices, like crawling up a ditch or waiting under a roof, usually cost cycles and buy cover. Quick choices save cycles and put you in the open. Most of the game is deciding which one you can afford right now.

You start with time to take one thing from the dispatch room: a portable police scanner that picks up the deputies, the keys to the spare ambulance, or a road flare. The scanner tells you things you can't see for yourself. The ambulance is fast and hard to hide. The flare has exactly one use, and there is more than one thing it is good for. One of them can turn up again later.

The visitors are not doing anything at random. They sweep the town in straight rows, one block at a time, and the more of the town is shouting and shooting, the lower they come. At the last decision you choose how to spend whatever you have left. The shelter door, the ridge, and the open road on top of the dam each have a condition, and the line under every choice tells you what it costs before you pick it. Reading never costs time, and nothing happens while you think.

Who you meet

Mrs. Agnes Tolliver lives next door. She ran the signal tower at the rail junction for thirty-one years, and when you find her she is on her porch with binoculars, counting. You can hurry her, stay and watch with her, or tell her to lock the door and stay home. Marisol is nine, cold, and holding her father's dead phone. Her father walked into town for help an hour ago and hasn't come back.

Deputy Abel Strand is standing in the middle of Quarry Road beside his stalled cruiser when the hum first cuts out. At the Mill Street bridge you meet the town itself: forty frightened people, pickups, a floodlight, and Royce Dunlevy from the feed store, who wants to shoot the lights down. The visitors are one danger tonight. Tarrow Bend is the other.

The five endings

They Wave Back. Shelter by Dawn. Left the Town Behind. Taken, Returned. Taken. One ending spares the whole town, one gets you under concrete, one gets you out of the valley and leaves everyone else in it, one costs you a day you will never remember, and one doesn't bring you home.

Every ending names your one right choice on a win, or your one wrong choice otherwise. From the result page you can rewind to a turning point instead of starting over, and the endings you have found are saved on this device.

A note on tone

This is a serious story told plainly. Tarrow Bend, its reservoir, its people and its visitors are invented, and the episode is not based on any film, show, book or game. The visitors are never shown as monsters; they are careful, deliberate and hard to read, and most of the danger comes from not understanding them and from what frightened people do. The worst ending is a bad one, but nothing in it is graphic. Nobody is shown hurt, and the people who are taken are simply not there anymore.

You play a dispatcher, not a medic, and nothing in the game is real-world emergency advice. It is written for adults who want a short game with a real decision on every screen and a reason to play it again.

Who you meet

• You. The overnight dispatcher at Tarrow County Dispatch. Ten years on the radio; half the town knows your voice and not your face.
• Mrs. Agnes Tolliver. Your neighbor on Ashby Lane, eighty-four. Ran the rail signal tower for thirty-one years and still notices patterns before anyone else.
• Marisol. Nine years old, alone in her father's truck in a ditch on Quarry Road. Her father walked to town for help and hasn't come back.
• Deputy Abel Strand. A young sheriff's deputy whose cruiser stalled on Quarry Road. Standing in the open, looking up, when the hum first stops.
• Royce Dunlevy. Runs the feed store. At the Mill Street bridge with a floodlight, a crowd and a plan to shoot the lights down.

Questions

How long does First Contact Night take?

About five minutes for one run. There are eight decisions, and most people play it a few times to find more of the five endings.

Can you lose before the last decision?

No. Every run reaches the pump house at the end of the dam. Earlier choices decide how much hum is left, how hidden you are, what you're carrying and who is with you, and those decide which ways out still work.

Is it based on a real event or an existing story?

No. The town, the reservoir, the visitors and everyone you meet are original, and the game isn't modeled on any film, show, book or game.

Is it free, and does it save?

It is free, with no sign-up. Your current run and the endings you have found are saved in this browser. Nothing is sent to a server.