Yes, the cover admits it's made from recycling Wolfenstein hardware. Surprise?
Corridor 7: Alien Invasion is a First-Person Shooter made by Capstone Software using the Wolfenstein Engine, one of the most common programming software at the time released in the FPS-boom made popular by Doom back then.
In a reversal of Doom's plot (despite the game being a blatant clone); some time in 2024, an alien artifact recovered from Mars, being studied in a secret research laboratory known as Corridor 7, unintentionally opens an interdimensional portal leading from Mars to Earth, resulting in monsters from another planet teleporting into our world. Like every FPS at the time, you're a badass Special Forces soldier assigned to contain the invasion by killing all aliens infesting Corridor 7 and shutting down the portal.
Corridor 7: Alien Invasion contain examples of:
- Aliens Are Bastards: The aliens' first instinct when a portal allows them to visit Earth? Kill All Humans. No reasoning required.
- Alien Invasion: It's right in the title!
- Arm Cannon: The Mechanical Warrior enemies have Gatling-guns attached to their right hand.
- Big Bad: Solrac, the disembodied floating alien skull who leads the aliens. He's also the Final Boss of the game.
- Blatant Item Placement: You're fighting an alien force in an office building, and the game will helpfully dispense you items in letterboxes built into walls, marked either as "AMMO", "HEALTH" or "ARMOR" periodically. It might be justified since the aliens doesn't understand our language and simply decide to ignore them.
- Blob Monster: The Semaj enemies are purple alien blobs with fangs and four eyes on eyestalks. It attacks as a sentient puddle and dissolves when killed.
- Body Armor as Hit Points: Armor collected (depicted as spacesuits on a rack) serves as a second health bar. While it does absorb damage, your health still depletes slightly when wearing armor - in fact there's a separate meter for Health and Armor, and different pickups to restore either.
- Cyborg: The aptly named Mechanical Warriors, and the only alien enemy who doesn't have an odd-sounding alien name. They're depicted as reptilians with plenty of armor organically grafted into themselves, including face-concealing helmets that makes them look almost entirely robotic.
- Dead Guy on Display: You'll be wondering, in the midst of shooting aliens, on where the hell are all the human scientists, researchers, guards and staff in Corridor 7. Until you reach the laboratory's lower depths where dozens and dozens of slain humans are hung on racks for display.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: One on the upper-right corner displays the entire level's map, as well as every enemy on the same level (you're a blue dot, aliens are in yellow). Good thing too, because you'll need said map to hunt down all the aliens and backtrack once you've cleared the floor of enemies.
- Eye Beams: Solrac the floating alien head Final Boss attacks you with eye-blasts.
- Giant Mook: Some of the alien brutes are huge. Brace yourself...
- The Eniram monsters, hulking horned creatures whose design seems to be ripped from the demons in Doom. They're among the largest mook enemies in-game.
- Ttocs, large-but-slow alien mooks who can take more damage than their regular-sized counterparts.
- Tymocs are purple-skinned, muscular alien monsters armed with powerful plasma launchers. They're really sparse in numbers thankfully.
- Gotta Kill Them All: You begin each stage by stepping off an elevator on a level filled with hostile alien life. You then explore the corridors, killing all the aliens you can see, and once the alien threat is neutralized the game announces "Floor Secured!" allowing you to return to the same elevator. Try going back without killing the required minimum of enemies and the elevator simply won't open.
- Invincibility Power-Up: A floating blue sphere, who grants you several seconds of invulnerability. Do NOT be too happy when you come across one though - they tend to appear near areas where you get swarmed by plenty of alien mooks, including higher-level, difficult enemies.
- Invisible Monsters: One of the abilities from Eniram, alien creatures who can momentarily turn invisible before ambushing you. They're still audible, however.
- Level Goal: Each stage is set on a single floor and ends with the elevator. It's unusual in that you start at the elevator and you have to return there when you kill enough enemies.
- Lizard Folk: All of the game's common alien enemies resemble reptilian humanoids.
- Glass Cannon: Nerraw aliens are among the smallest enemies (they stood up to the waists of the common Rodex and Bandor mooks) and are as weakly-armored as their size suggests. But their projectile attacks somehow deals insane levels of damage, and they can whittle your health by more than two-thirds or outright kill you in seconds. Target them first!
- Nobody Here but Us Statues: Bandor aliens have a stealth device built in their suits, which allows them to transform into barrels, furniture, filing cabinets, potted plants and the like. You'll frequently enter empty conference rooms only for Bandors to suddenly appear from nowhere and attack.
- Oculothorax: The Ailoprobe enemies are gigantic floating eyeballs who serves as "spies" for the aliens, alerting other monsters when it spots you. There's also a Robot Me version of the same enemy called the Animated Probe.
- Patrolling Mook: The Aliprobe and Animated Probes. They're literally eyes for the other aliens.
- Plasma Cannon: One of the weapons you can use to melt alien mooks. On the other hand, the huge Tymoc alien mooks uses the same weapon.
- Scare Chord: The game lets out one of these when it decides that it wants to pop a giant red skull in front of you for no reason other than that you were lost and trying to find the elevator. Needless to say, it has caused a number of players to soil themselves the first time it happened.
- Sdrawkcab Name: Some of the alien enemies are derived from real-world, human names, flipped around, like Nerraw (Warren), Eitak (Katie), Otrebor (Roberto), Semaj (James), Tenaj (Janet) and so on. What the names signifies however is currently unknown (the game's QA Director is James Wheeler, but not so much for the rest).
- Sequential Boss: Tebazile, who serves as The Dragon leading the alien invasion. It needs to be killed five times, starting from his default form to King Mook versions of the Eniram, Tymok and Solrac enemies before turning back to himself. Have fun!
- Skull for a Head: The Tenaj alien mooks have heads resembling purple skulls.
- Stripped to the Bone: Ttoc and Tymok enemies will melt away leaving behind a skeleton after they're killed.
- Torso with a View: What happens to the Tenaj enemies when they take damage. Somehow, by shooting at them their midsection will open up little holes, and if they're killed their entire torso dissolves leaving them collapsing as a pile of limbs, hips, and the aforementioned skull-like head.
- Unrobotic Reveal: Some alien mooks, like Otrebors and Mechanical Warriors, looks almost entirely robotic thanks to their various cybernetic implants and face-concealing helmets. Killing them leads to a death animation where the helmets start cracking apart and you see a fleshy alien face in there.
