The Invincible strands you on a harsh alien world and doesn’t let up

theverge.com:

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

For a while there, first-person exploration games — otherwise known as walking simulators — were all the rage. There were titles like Gone Home, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture that were basically FPS games without the guns, allowing players to explore spaces from a first-person viewpoint, uncovering a story as they went. For whatever reason, the genre has been relatively quiet of late. But now, it’s back in a big way with The Invincible, a quiet, desolate trip to an eerie alien planet that starts strong and never really lets up.

Based on the novel of the same name by Polish author Stanisław Lem and developed by Starward Industries, The Invincible puts you in the role of Yasna, an astrobiologist who is part of a crew researching the very strange world of Regis III. At the outset, things aren’t going so well. Yasna has been separated from the rest of the team, so the game begins as something of a rescue mission. With her commanding officer in her ear, Yasna sets about finding the rest of the crew by navigating the seemingly barren planet’s surface.

Regis III is a curious place. Initially, it feels like a dead alien world, its surface covered mostly in sand and rocks. But eventually, you’ll learn that life does exist, but only underwater. For some reason, there’s absolutely no life on land — not even bacteria. Yasna’s quest to save her crewmates naturally becomes linked to the mysteries of the planet. I won’t spoil too much, but as Yasna uncovers sprawling metallic structures underground, it becomes clear