The Invincible review

pcgamer.com:

What is it? A narrative-led first-person adventure based on Stanislaw Lem’s 1960s sci-fi novel.
Release date November 6, 2023
Expect to pay TBA
Developer Starward Industries
Publisher 11 bit studios
Reviewed on RTX 2070, i7-10750H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck TBA
Link Official site

Adaptations of novels are still rare among games, and perhaps that’s understandable given the challenges involved. The Invincible is a case in point—Starward Industries was always going to have its work cut out visualising Stanislaw Lem’s dense descriptions of an alien planet, and that’s before folding believable characters into the mix along with ruminations on human existence. Yet happily, the end result is a positive advert for the process—The Invincible largely succeeds in exploring this less visited frontier.

For starters, Starward makes life a little easier for itself by refusing a direct adaptation of the 60s sci-fi story. There the plot centred on the Invincible itself, a mountainous starship loaded with crew, robots and enough weaponry to destroy the planet of Regis III it landed on, with the aim of tracking down a previous mission to the lifeless world that had mysteriously gone silent. The game reduces the scale, placing you in the spacesuit of Yasna, one of a crew of six scientists who land on Regis III to conduct research, shortly before the Invincible is due to arrive. Curiously, what follows could almost exist on the same timeline as Lem’s work, but also recontextualises some of the book’s memorable scenes with its new characters, effectively remixing the tale—a kind of parallel universe retelling, if you will.

Whether you’re familiar with the source material or not, though, you’ve probably guessed that Regis III harbours some