Indie review: Invisible, Inc.

Corporate espionage has become a lucrative yet dangerous business. The corporation that control the world will do anything to get the upper hand on their rivals but invisible, inc. an agency only for espionage will surpass all of them.

Invisible, Inc. is an indie hybrid of stealth and tactical game created by Klei Entertainment. We will take control of the agents and operators of the corporate spy agency, invicible.Inc and we will infiltrate, steal and hack our way through the corrupt corporate world.

The game starts with the HQ of invisible inc. being invaded and the boss forced to escape along with the group’s artificial intelligence. From there we have 72 hours to find to set a counterattack before the agency artificial intelligence runs out of power. In that time the objective is to complete mission around the world to collect resources, find capture agents and upgrade those already under your command.

i’m a little divided on the 72 hour mechanic. On one hand there are multiple customization for a session, it can either be easy with turn rewinds and level restarts, almost impossible or endless. I like this variety that combine with different agents at the start of each game gives great replayability. On the other hand the game is short with around 7-8 missions per run and can get a bit repetitive.

Once a mission is taken we enter to the tactical part of the game. The agents we send to infiltrate a corporation and the security force will each have a turn. What differs from any other tactical game is that the agents would rarely have enough firepower to beat the security forces if any at all. The objective is to move around undetected and this is what i really love about this game. Every turn is part of a chess match, using all your limited actions and gadgets you must make it past guards, cameras and lasers, All this while keeping in mind that at the end of the turn you must not be discovered by a patrolling guard discovering your agents or their deeds.

This unique mashup of tactical and stealth is what really sold the game to me, especially thanks to the many details the system has. For example doors are extremely important, opening one without peeping what's on the other side could expose you to a guard on the other side or forgetting to close one could let a patrolling guard you ignore see one of your agents. Plus, the time mechanic where once a set of turns passes the security gets tougher keeps the pace up and forces one to quickly decide when to be cautelous and when to risk it.

But although the gameplay at first intrigued me before i liked it what drove me to this games was the art style. It’s very unique and combined with the menus and UI gives a slick presentation in a futuristic vibe i haven’t seen before. Not to mention that the opening and closing cutscenes made with this style are quite good and are on par with some 3d animated tv shows.

In the end as much as i praise this game and i would recommend anyone to play it there are somethings that keep it short from me considering it a masterpiece. The difficulty of mission can be inconsistent and can make you rely more on luck than strategy or the aforementioned repetitiveness. Nevertheless i recommend any lover of tactical games to at least check it out as it won’t disappoint.

Get the game on steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/243970/Invisible_Inc/