14 DAY TRIAL // 
Sci-fi is one of the literary genres where Europe, especially Eastern Europe, managed to leave a mark on the world. Next to Jules Verne, the Strugatsky brothers and Mikhail Bulgakov, you cannot talk about science fiction without mentioning Stanislaw Lem. It was high time that his work got some attention from the game development industry, not just from Hollywood. But is the title developed by Starward Industry worthy of the famous novel? Read on to find out.
Based on the namesake novel, The Invincible is a walking simulator with plenty of puzzles and adventure elements. But the polish developers set the stakes higher and rather than limiting themselves to bring the book to life, they wanted to forge a visually memorable retro sci-fi game, with a minimalistic, yet futuristic style. The result is a solid game, that will at least open your appetite to check out other writings from Lem. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and see what works and what limps.
The story begins with our hero, Yasna, an astrobiologist, waking up on the surface of Regis III without any clue about what happened and where they are. After figuring out their location, you will start making your way towards the camp, but the radio silence foreshadows very concerning conclusions. When you finally find one of our colleagues instead of answers you will be faced with even more questions and a request to find the other members of your crew.
As you would expect, the search and rescue mission revealed a lot more than you would expect. True to the book, the game makes our hero question their own beliefs. Exploring Regis III is a daunting task, that forwards scientific discovery, but raises disturbing questions about the cycle of life and death or the consciousness of the machines. Just as in the case of many other walking simulators, the story itself is the most essential element, the gameplay mechanisms being there to support it.
As such your freedom of movement is quite limited and you have to follow a somewhat narrow trail envisioned by the developers. At first you will be amazed by the scale of the world, but soon you will realize that you are confined to a narrow corridor, being surrounded by lethal chasms and unclimbable surfaces. Invisibly but sure handedly you are guided along a path littered with dialogues and quite a few choices.
In some points of the story, you will have to make seemingly important choices, but the end game is never clear. With the Invincible it truly is about the journey, rather than the destination. The immersion is furthered by the use of various tools from binoculars to various detectors, that can trigger flashbacks that reveal precious details about the background story of the entire adventure.
It takes around 8 hours to finish the game, but you will need a lot of patience to walk through it. Just like Fort Solis it feels deliberately slow, way too slow. Yasna has their comfy pace, that can be nudged into a higher tempo just for a couple of meters, after running out of breath our hero slowing down even more compared to their original speed. The snail-like pace is rewarded on the other hand with a very detailed environment and objects like rovers. These can be driven, but they do not improve much on the speed of the game.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are the character models that underline the fact that we are dealing with an indie game lacking the resources of AAA games. Overall, the visual style of the game is memorable and immersive, managing to bring to life in spectacular fashion the atompunk style of the 50’s. The graphics are simultaneously futuristic and retro somehow, the end result being very close to what you would imagine reading retro sci-fi novels.
The problem as with many of the other titles of the genre, the developers have focused too much on the atmosphere and the story, and kind of forgot about the game part. Next to being really slow, there are also peculiar gameplay choices that will frustrate the less patient players and cheap tricks meant to extend the length of the game. Just like many other walking simulators, The Invincible is more of an interactive novel, rather than a complete game.
The Good
- Immersive story with multiple endings
- Memorable visual style
- Great dialogues with multiple choices
The Bad
- Slow pace to artificially lengthen the game
- Ultra-simplistic gameplay
- Occasional bugs
Conclusion
But I can’t forget or forgive the deliberately snail like pace and cheap shots meant to extend a 4-hour experience into one that take 8 hours to finish. Despite the short length, the experience would have been much more enjoyable if it wouldn’t have been so diluted.
Review key provided by the publisher.
