The Shortgrey (1993, Amiga)

The Shortgrey is a point-and-click adventure which was developed by Swiss company Alcatraz and released by French company Accrosoft. It was also released for Atari ST.

The planet of Zokilora is inhabited by an alien people called the "Shortgrey". They have a highly advanced civilization, but a nevertheless a severe problem with overpopulation. To solve this problem, the rulers of the planet have decided to set up a secret mission codenamed "Amanite". You play an unnamed Shortgrey who gets tasked to secretly travel to Earth and help some Professor Xylor in fulfilling this mission (and this is all you now). Arriving on Earth, you first need to disguise yourself as an inhabitant of Terra and find Prof. Xylor.

The Shortgrey uses a point-and-click interface similar to Maniac Mansion. You have a list of verbs and combine them with objects to create commands. Like with Maniac Mansion, the game does not automatically indicate if the cursor is over a usable object. You need to use a special command ("observer") for this.