The Invincible Review
The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem is one of those books that helped lay the foundations of sci-fi tropes when it was written in the 1960s. Elements like artificial swarm intelligence and microbots owe some of their conception to the works of Lem. Adapting the novel into a video game provides an interesting opportunity, with Starward Industries aiming to bringing this iconic work to a completely new audience.
If you’re expecting The Invincible to be an all-out action adventure game then you will have to adjust that perspective. Taking on the role of Yasna, a Commonwealth biologist, players are transported to the surface of Regis III. It’s a world that holds mysteries and drama, the first of which is figuring out how Yasna ended up on Regis III and where the rest of the crew she’d been travelling with have disappeared to.
You’ll start with getting your bearings and learning about the equipment you have, inspired by retro sci-fi and analogue technology. For example, Yasna’s beacon tracker doesn’t have a screen, but features a circle of dotted lights that flash as you get nearer to a target. There’s also a telemeter, showing objects in green and acting as a pathfinder in certain areas of the game.
Much of The Invincible is walking and talking, exploring the various areas of Regis III as you progress on Yasna’s journey to uncover the mystery. There are some puzzle elements within the game, such as the aforementioned pathfinding, but they’re not that difficult. Instead, much of the interaction with the world is Yasna commenting on things, the situations she finds herself in and making connections between her discoveries and relaying them back to base.
In some ways, it could be viewed as a ‘walking simulator’, but the story does have
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