The Roswell Incident

Cover to The Roswell Incident, a UFO-inspired mystery party game.
(11 customer reviews)

$39.99

The Roswell Incident is a downloadable 1940s murder mystery game with an alien theme for 10 to 13 guests and one or two hosts. Set in 1947 Roswell, New Mexico. Find out what really happened in Roswell. Did a flying saucer crash – or was it something else? Written by Steve Hatherley. Recommended for ages 12+.

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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 three 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.
Includes rules for combat.

Characters are ungendered.
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.

Thanks for the game! We played on Saturday with a party of nine teenagers and it went really well. We had ten people planned but one dropped out, so I removed the Agent Deacon role. Being able to visit and search locations by talking to the host was quite different to the other games we have played and so it took people a while to get the hang of that, but once they did the game really took off. Simon Cozens

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.

"Thank you for a great site, fantastic games, good service and very quick reply. Keep up the good work." Ole Martin Brodwall, Norway

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, contact us with the name of the game and the email address you used to purchase it, and we'll resend it.

11 reviews for The Roswell Incident

  1. Daniel Ernst (verified owner) –

    Another great plot, with very clever intersecting storylines. We used it for our daughter’s 16th birthday party with her friends and it was an absolute blast (quite literally!). Everyone enjoyed themselves thoroughly and are begging to do it again sooner than a year! This is the fifth freeform MM we have run, and once again it delivered. They are absolutely the crown jewels of murder mysteries, with no equal in terms of quality in my opinion!

  2. Loode (verified owner) –

    We played the Roswell Incident with 10 people and had a blast. Quite literally cause there was quite some shooting going on. 😀 Everybody had fun and liked the theme cause it gave cool options for dressing up (see picture) It took quite some preparation and reading for the host but it paid off in a good running evening

    Image #1 from Loode

  3. Anonymous (verified owner) –

    The game was a ton of fun. Everyone enjoyed it. It wasn’t too difficult to set up. Everything needed was included. I am excited to try another one.

  4. Marte (verified owner) –

    We had a super fun evening playing this game and all my guests thought it was a great theme. The only negative is that some characters are a bit “uninteresting”. One of the guests said he felt he was only an npc. Other characters again are super fun. All in all well worth the money and looking forward to next year and playing a new mystery 😀

  5. Edward –

    We had a mix of new players and people who had played freeform games before. They all loved this game. It felt like everyone had something to do for the full length of the game, with the drip feed of information players received through out adding extra drama.

  6. Allison A. –

  7. Kristen –

    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.

  8. Ryan –

    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

  9. Anonymous –

    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.

  10. Jacob –

  11. Elina –

    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!

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Can I play this game with 8 players? Brian asked on 10 December 2024

Hi Brian, thank you for your interest in The Roswell Incident. This game is for 10 to 12 players. If you'd like to take a look here though, you'll see plenty of other games of ours that will work fine for 8 -- hopefully one of those will work for your group.

 Freeform Games answered on 10 December 2024 store manager
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