[h1] About[/h1]
Invisible inc is a roguelike, isometric turn based game, where you command a team of up to four spies infiltrating and performing different types of missions in fully randomized maps. The soundtrack deserves a special mention as is masterful.
[h1]The story[/h1]
In a dystopian world where governments have fallen to megacorporations that now rule the world as a corporatocracy, Olivia Gladstone, former intelligence officer, runs a team of spies against them. The player takes the role of a silent off screen member in her team: the operator.
This player personization as an off-screen character has an interesting effect on how the game is played, as the operator's role is to be in charge of the tactics remotely through a screen, just like you as a player are. This parallelism, together with how the characters talk to you and hold you accountable, roast and pressure you, unload their stress and frustrations on you, or congratulate you, makes it feel personal every time, makes you feel the weight of mistakes and the satisfaction of a job well done more intensely.
[h1]The gameplay[/h1]
The gameplay loop is basically that of a roguelike, game scales in difficulty with every mission and you have to keep up or die. While in lower difficulties you can rewind turns, in higher ones you can't, not even alt+f4 as the game remembers every action, and a single blunder can end an entire playthrough.
There are two elements to consider, the pre mission preparation and then the missions themselves.
In the pre mission preparation you upgrade your agents stats and assign them items that you got, then choose the mission type amongst the ones you have available (each corporation has its own strengths). These are varied, ranging from kidnapping, to data extraction, breakout of prisoners, money heists, item theft, server farms and cybernetic lab raids, etc.
Then theres the mission itself. Once the team teleports into place, the corporations notice something amiss and an alarm clock starts counting. There are six alarm levels in this clock, each alarm level lasts five turns normally, but your actions can speed it up, some by a lot. Each alarm level the corporation will become more suspicious and increase their security measures like raising firewalls on objects or bringing extra guards into the level. Eventually at alarm level five your cover is blown and everyone will start hunting you if they weren't already. The longer it takes, the more dangerous it gets, so decisionmaking on what you can do and what you should do is a very interesting mindgame that never gets old.
Generally the only mandatory objective is to escape with at least one agent, otherwise it is game over. All other tasks are not mandatory but are essential as leaving empty handed often will hamper how prepared you are for future missions, but the decision is yours.
During the mission you explore with your agents and have them interact with stuff and evade guards while you counter their security measures. Most items are protected by firewalls and/or viruses that you have to break using hacking programs each with different effects.
To survive you have to carefully distribute your effort between levelling up your team, getting good items and getting good programs.
[h1]Difficulty and replayability[/h1]
There are several difficulty levels and also a custom one that lets you tune every single aspect of the game, but in general the difficulty of the game (without rewinds) ranges between high to borderline impossible if you choose to make it so. It doesn't matter how good you get at this game, how much you know, it will always challenge you due to the many customizable settings, its randomized nature and the complexity of the many variables at play within it. Some mods also add simple mechanics that spike difficulty massively, like agent instapermadeath or longer guard patrols.
Many games claim to be very replayable but this is one of the few which is in fact forever replayable, as the distribution of maps, guard positions and schedules, the location of cameras and other security measures, what items you can find etc, is always random, and the challenge is always high if you choose so.
[h1]Conclussion[/h1]
This game is truly a masterpiece for the ages.
