Mimic Alert

Mimic Alert is a first-person co-op horror game with a PS1-era look. You are a new hire at an agency that clears mimics from a quarantined research zone. Mimics can take the shape of ordinary objects, cats or people, and you must identify them and survive the night.

Learn the site

Each shift begins in daylight. You explore the site, note where things are and how many there are, talk to staff, and buy supplies at the stand. When the gate closes and the power goes out, you have a torch, a revolver and six rounds. Find the mimics hiding among ordinary things and shoot them; shooting the wrong thing has consequences.

Scientists, technicians and nurses remain on site overnight. Ask them about themselves during the day and remember their answers: at night, some mimics wear their faces, with a detail of their story wrong or their clothes a slightly different shade. If you shoot a person, the shift ends. If you shoot a mimic disguised as a person, it tears its way out.

Darkness can help expose mimics: when you turn off your torch, things that are not what they seem cannot stay still. Further into the zone, some mimics creep after you while your back is turned and leap when you look at them. You can use tools including bear traps, spectral glasses that reveal tracks, flash grenades that make unreal things run, a scanner and a stun gun that jolts liars into blurting out information.

Co-op and challenge

You can play the full campaign alone or as a pair with a friend through Steam. Co-op has its own progress and smarter mimics, and either player can be caught. The Challenge mode sends you to a random site in a bigger building with more mimics and 200 credits to spend. You can also wear a TV, bucket or cat on your head.

The Mimic Queen

In PvP, one player becomes the Mimic Queen and up to four play as humans for one night in a large building. The Queen can disguise herself as any object, cat or person, then lunge from her disguise, set traps, infect staff and turn humans into mimics. The humans must complete their tasks and open a gate to escape, or kill the Queen. Public lobbies and proximity voice chat are available.

Locations and shifts

The game has nine locations: warehouses, cold stores, offices, living quarters, laboratories, the main building, the ALARM finale and the Halloween Miller farm. Each location has two shifts, and each shift takes place in a new building, so you must learn the layout again each night. Sites include open yards and closed buildings, with day and night conditions, fog, steam and street lamps.

Mimics have dozens of ways to give themselves away, though some give away nothing. The game has three difficulty levels and grades each night from S to F. Pluto tells the story over the radio, as someone who has seen too many new hires come and go.

Equipment and style

The supply stand offers body armour, rounds, a scanner, flash grenades, bear traps, spectral glasses and a stun gun. There are also many hats, and cats to pet throughout the buildings; most of them are cats. The visuals use low resolution, vertex wobble, dithering and hard shadows.