Description
The Roswell Incident is a 1940s murder mystery game with an alien theme for 10 to 13 guests. Download the free introductory file.
The Roswell Incident is a thrilling evening of intrigue, double-dealing, and mysterious goings-on in 1947 Roswell! Your guests will be in the middle of the action, and it will be up to them to wheel and deal to get what they want. Will they achieve their goals, keep their secrets hidden, and survive The Roswell Incident?
“A great game, with interesting plots, believable characters with great motivations, cool investigations, and some fun twists. I love how The Roswell Incident plays with real incidents and gives its own spin on them. This game will be fun and easy to run for new players but will also appeal to more experienced players who love to get their teeth stuck into roleplay. Highly recommended!”
Elina, United Kingdom
| See stories and pictures from The Roswell Incident |
Click here to read the Roswell Courier. |
In June 1947, an Idaho pilot reported seeing a string of nine shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds of 1,200 miles an hour. One week later, something crashed near Roswell, New Mexico (population 25,000). An experimental aircraft? A weather balloon? A secret military project? Or something else?
Two days later and Roswell has visitors. It is noon, July 3, 1947.
Welcome to The Roswell Incident, where we discover what really happened in Roswell. Why did the US Army and FBI arrive in Roswell? What happened on the Turner ranch? What did crash outside Roswell?
The Roswell Incident lasts for about four hours and is suited to an evening. It is often played over a meal – a finger buffet if possible, to allow guests to circulate and talk in private.
 Includes rules for combat. |
 Characters are ungendered. |
The free introductory pdf file contains an introduction to the game and a cast list of all the characters.
Cast of characters
Citizens of Roswell
- Mayor Weinrib: Roswell’s mayor
- Sheriff Jackson: Roswell’s police chief
- Dr. Blake: Vet, with a practice opposite the sheriff’s office
- Turner: Cattle rancher living north of Roswell, originally from England
- Karns: Chain-smoking mechanic and junkyard owner
- Finley: Roswell Courier reporter
Roswell Army Air Field
- Major Collins: US Army major
- Sgt. Baker: Major Collins’ driver
- Dr. Fowler: Shark Systems Inc scientist
Visitors
- Prof. Kraushaar: Physicist at the University of New Mexico
- Zivojinovič: Junior reporter for Albuquerque Chronicle
- Agent Franz: FBI agent
- Agent Deacon: Junior FBI agent
The Roswell Incident is for 10 to 13 guests. The characters are all ungendered, so they can be played by any mix of guests as required.
You also need one hosts, to organize the party and ensure everything runs smoothly.
How Freeform Games murder mystery games work
The Roswell Incident is unlike other murder mystery games. Although the game has a mysterious death, each character has several goals they must try to accomplish. While they may want to solve the mystery, The Roswell Incident contains plenty of other plots and secrets to keep everyone busy. The Roswell Incident isn’t scripted, and lets the players decide how to achieve their goals and thwart their enemies.
On the evening of the game the guests are met by the organizer and welcomed to the small New Mexico town of Roswell.
They then receive their detailed backgrounds – including dark secrets, objectives and money. The fun then begins as they form alliances, blackmail each other, steal items and maybe even try to murder one another! Along the way they may uncover some of the mysteries of The Roswell Incident. Why did the US Army and FBI arrive in Roswell? What happened on the Turner ranch? What did crash outside Roswell?
Finally, the game concludes and everyone finds out how they did, and what secrets everyone else was concealing.
Recommended for ages 12+
We recommend The Roswell Incident for those aged 12+ as it is family-friendly and contains no adult themes.
Extra characters
Sometimes you have too many guests and need more characters. The Roswell Incident comes with free extra characters (written by us or previous hosts) that are included in the download when you purchase the game.
- Deputy Werner – Roswell’s deputy sheriff (Any)
(by Freeform Games)
Please note that we haven’t always tested these – and they may not tie in exactly with our games.
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Cast Iron Guarantee
We offer a Cast Iron Guarantee on all our murder mystery games. If you’re not completely satisfied with Murder at Sea then please let us know within 30 days and we will refund you. See our full terms and conditions, and our refund policy.
Trouble downloading? If you have trouble downloading the game files, please first check your spam folder. If you still can’t find the download email, drop us a line at info@freeformgames.com with the name of the game and the email address you used to purchase it, and we’ll resend it.
Kristen (verified owner) –
Best party ever!! Thank you for the brilliant story and kit. We were all first timers to murder mystery parties, and we are 100% sold on Freeform Games! The instructions were clear, the interwoven plots were wild, and the alien desert theme was a big plus.
Ryan (verified owner) –
The Roswell Incident was so much fun! I’m excited to run it with another group
I hosted it with a full group of 13. About half the players had played a murder mystery before. I was a little worried about combat rules, but the group did a great job of not going full cowboy until we were nearing the end of the night.
I found the combat to be very additive. Players used it to negotiate information, and at one point we had a chaotically fun 5-in-a-row shoot off that took a number of rock-paper-scissor fights to resolve. Not everyone was part of combat, but it seemed engaging for everyone to watch.
The big combat segment happened about 20 minutes earlier than the game’s final checkpoint. By this point, some of the non-combat characters had mostly completed their goals and already had a little bit of downtime, so it felt like a natural stopping point and I moved the final announcements up to this point in time.
I’d strongly recommend printing the contingencies differently. Item 99 is a bit of a spoiler, so I printed strips of paper telling players to talk to the host when they found items by number, excluding their names. This worked well and the secret ended up being both expected and a surprise as a result.
I’d also recommend giving players the option to text the host for performing secret actions, instead of always making them talk to the host in person. One of the players with a secret identity did this, and it made it easy for me to perform their secret action without implicating them.
I really really loved the plot and characters. I don’t want to delve into details because of spoilers, but it isn’t quite a normal murder mystery and the way that was handled was fantastic and super engaging
Freeform Games (store manager) –
Thanks for your review. Based on your feedback, we’ve changed the contingencies to remove any spoilers. We like your idea for texting to secretly communicate with the host – that works for other games as well.
Anonymous (verified owner) –
The game was fun, but not as good as the 3 others we have played (Will to Murder, Curse of the Pharoah, and A Future Death). The story, setting and characters were great, but there were 2 problems that detracted:
1. One character met their win condition too soon and the game ended after just 1h45m. Guests had been anticipating a full evening and were disappointed when it was over too soon.
2. In the debrief, we learned that no one was remotely close to figuring out what the aliens were doing and we did not see any path by which they could have garnered enough information to do so; in that sense the game felt a bit unbalanced.
Freeform Games (store manager) –
Thanks for being a loyal customer, and thank you for your feedback on The Roswell Incident. We’re sorry you were disappointed at how the game played out. In light of your feedback, we have made a few adjustments to the game to minimize the chances of the game ending earlier than expected, and making it more likely that the aliens will be unmasked.
Jacob (verified owner) –
Elina (store manager) –
A great game, with interesting plots, believable characters with great motivations, cool investigations, and some fun twists. I love how The Roswell Incident plays with real incidents and gives its own spin on them. This game will be fun and easy to run for new players but will also appeal to more experienced players who love to get their teeth stuck into roleplay. Highly recommended!