Play Space Quest: Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter Online

Space Quest: Chapter I – The Sarien Encounter came out in 1986 for MS-DOS, developed and published by Sierra On-Line. It was part of that early wave of PC adventure games where text parsers and pixel art felt like a glimpse into something new, even if the graphics were simple by today's standards.

You control Roger Wilco, a hapless janitor caught aboard a spaceship under attack. Your goal is to survive, escape the ship, and eventually thwart the Sarien invaders. The game uses a text parser interface; you type commands like "look at panel" or "use keycard" to interact with the environment, screen by screen. Exploration is slow and deliberate, with plenty of opportunities to die in absurd ways (stepping on a loose plate or forgetting to put on a spacesuit, for instance). The pacing is methodical, and the difficulty can be punishing if you miss subtle clues. It feels like stumbling through a sci-fi comedy where every mistake teaches you something, usually the hard way.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".