Based on the Polish sci-fi novel of the same name, “The Invincible” sets out to recreate the classic story in an interactive space while giving the player choices that shape the story’s outcome. Even though the premise is solid, the game falls into some familiar pitfalls.
Players will take control of Yasna, a crewmember of The Dragonfly, a ship of scientists sent to survey a planet named Regis III. Yasna starts the game waking up on the planet’s surface with a foggy memory and apart from her crew. The game’s opening moments are slow but do a good job of establishing the tone and conveying the game’s classic sci-fi aesthetic.
Since the game is mostly narrative-driven, there’s not a lot going on with the actual gameplay. This is the kind of “walking simulator” that was more popular in the early 2010s — and unfortunately, the label is accurate when talking about “The Invincible.” While Yasna can use some tools to help her on her journey to find her team, most of the gameplay is just going from one place to another while interacting with some buttons and levers here and there.
Playing the game feels like you’re in a long episode of “Star Trek” combined with “The Twilight Zone.” It invokes the kind of dry sci-fi that is interesting to think about but isn’t exactly exciting. That being said, the game does a good job of setting up a lot of interesting questions and using classic themes like humanity’s place in the universe and machines evolving past human control.
While Yasna is mostly on her own through the game’s story, she is in radio contact with her astrogator, who helps guide her through the objectives. It’s a choice that ends up hurting the game’s atmosphere, because even though Yasna is isolated on the planet, she still has this voice constantly in her ear.
Toward the end of the game, I was getting tired of the characters yammering on and on. The constant communication doesn’t even develop their characters all that much, and worse than that, it even halts progress until the dialogue ends.
While I admire the developer’s attempts to adapt a classic story into a game, it just doesn’t do enough to keep the game interesting. It’s a shame, because it does have a lot going on with its setting, story and technology. There’s so little variety in the gameplay that even though it’s only a few hours long, it still feels like a chore to get through. If there were some interesting puzzles or platforming elements, then it could have stayed interesting, but it’s mostly a lot of slow walking and climbing.
If “The Invincible” proves anything, it’s that these kind of narrative-driven games had their time, and if one is going to come out today, it needs to have more going on than an interesting story.
Even though the game is $30, I’d have a hard time recommending it due to the stale gameplay and lack of variety. It does have some different endings depending on the player’s
choices, so it has some replay value at the very least. “The Invincible” blasts off with three stars out of five.
