Let’s get one thing out of the way real quick. The Invincible is a walking sim. It’s basically an interactive movie of sorts. You walk through a mostly linear path with minimal interaction and experience the narrative. I completely understand that this won’t appeal to everyone but if you love a good, slow sci-fi narrative you may want to give The Invincible a chance.
I will admit that I am pretty biased as I love science fiction, especially the slow kind that focuses more on the science element rather than grandiose battles and flashy action sequences. Invincible fits right in the first category. It is a gloriously slow and meticulous story that feels like it could actually happen in the not so distant future.
The world looks amazing. You are on an alien planet and it manages to combine landscapes one might see on earth with the completely bizarre and unfamiliar alien vistas. I can’t wait for VR technology and computer graphics to advance to the point that you can simulate walking on another planet. Until we reach that point, games like this are the closet we’ll get.
I also love the aesthetic of all the gear and apparatuses that you stumble across. It has a distinctly soviet, retrofuturistic feel.
The narrative pacing is excellent as well. You wake up as Doctor Yasna, an astrobiologist traveling with a small but highly specialized team on an exploratory venture. The rest of the team was exploring the mysterious planet Regis III with Yasna and the Astrogator staying onboard the orbiting space craft but now she finds herself inexplicably stranded on the planet with no memory of how she got there or why.
You follow Doctor Yasna as she slowly retraces the steps of her fellow crewmates and uncovers the mystery of Regis III. As she finds her crewmates one by one, they all seem to be suffering from some undiscovered illness. Let’s just say things are not as they seem.
While I can’t really categorize The Invincible as a “game” the immersive, narrative driven experience is fantastic. Again, I’ll reiterate that I completely understand this type of experience won’t be for everyone. Even so, enjoying Invincible made me realize that video games are underutilized in making more cinematic experiences. With the level of visual fidelity we have nowadays, I don’t see it being farfetched that more and more individuals start making their own movies in the form of video games.
If you think about it, it’s much cheaper than hiring a full team of actors, crew, engineers, and so forth and physically traveling to destinations to film a scene. There’s untapped potential here to create narratives and worlds and stories that have limited interaction and are more of a passive experience.
I enjoyed The Invincible and I hope more people take advantage of this medium to tell interesting stories and show off fantastic worlds.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/731040/The_Invincible/
Review Score: 90% positive with a total of 1488 reviews as of this writing (12/08/23)
Developer: Starward Industries
Publisher: 11 bit studios
Release Date: Nov 6, 2023
MSRP: $29.99
I received a key from Keymailer. Thank you so much for the key!
Time spent: 3.1 hours
Achievement Score: 4/29
Ducky Obrien 