The Majestic was Earth's greatest space liner offering unparalleled luxury and comfort. She disappeared on her maiden voyage, no-one could trace her. Then, about a week later, a lifeboat with survivors was discovered out near the Pleiades but the captain and a couple of other people were still missing. The search went on but turned up nothing and eventually it was abandoned. Some time later a feint signal was detected. It was thought that this could be the Majestic's beacon but it was so very faint that no-one was sure. So a field archaeologist was dispatched to investigate.

Majestic Part 1: Alien Encounter is a science fiction point-and-click adventure game. The player takes on the role of the aforementioned archaeologist who locates the Majestic and explores the ship to discover what happened. Unlike traditional point-and-click adventures, however, the player explores the ship by sending up to four probes into the vessel. Each probe can link to systems, scan, cut holes in things with a torch, and pick up objects for examination. As the game progresses the probes can be upgraded to give them additional capabilities. They are controlled via an interface that displays the probe's view in a window the center of the screen. The same interface is used to save and restore the game.

The game is entirely mouse-controlled and has a point system which measures the player's progress through the game.