Inhabited Island: The Earthling

The Earthling is an adventure game based on the 1969 Soviet science fiction novel Inhabited Island (translated into English as "Prisoner of Power") by Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky. The player controls a young 22nd century space traveler from Earth, named Maxim Kammerer, who is stranded on a planet known as Saraksh, its civilization roughly corresponding to that of the Earth in the middle of the 20th century, and eventually becomes involved in social and political conflicts of its inhabitants. The game closely follows the plot of the novel, depicting its event from the beginning to the end.

The game world is composed out of pre-rendered still screens viewed from first-person perspective and navigated by clicking on arrows, in a limited "jumping" fashion similar to Myst. Objects that can be interacted with are highlighted, and interaction is performed by simple clicking. The game mostly relies on inventory-based puzzles, though there are several logic puzzles as well. Dialogues may have multiple choices, but this rarely affects gameplay.